Why this, why now
We mapped every field collected across the whole member journey — the Chrome extension, the Apply Now form, and the current members-area profile — to see where things overlap, disagree, or just don't quite work. Before we design the new members database, we need a clean answer for each of these, otherwise we either guess, or end up building today's inconsistencies permanently into the new system.
Nothing here affects anything live today — but this is genuinely the next thing we're building, so these decisions are what's standing between us and starting. The full picture and our proposed new structure are below, then a handful of specific decisions we need from you. Happy to talk through any of it on a call instead, if that's quicker.
Thanks for turning all of this around so quickly — every decision below, all 7, is now settled, and this is what the new members database will be built against.
The full picture
Every field, start to finish
Grouping by what each field is actually for, not which form happened to collect it:
Who you are
| Field | Collected today | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Extension, Apply Now, Profile | Consistent everywhere. No change needed. |
| What kind of member you are | Apply Now only ("which best describes you" — Founder, Investor, Executive, Sponsor, Government) | This one answer quietly decides what should happen next — more on that below. |
Professional profile
| Field | Collected today | What's not quite right |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Apply Now and the profile editor, separately | Captured twice, in two unconnected places — can quietly drift out of sync. |
| Job Title | ||
| Company Website | ||
| Industry | Apply Now (pick as many as apply) vs. profile editor (pick only one) | Same question, but the answer works completely differently depending which form you're looking at. |
| Location | Apply Now: one dropdown of 6 broad regions (e.g. "USA, Bay Area"). Profile: separate free-text city, plus a country field that isn't even shown on screen. | Two entirely different shapes of the same idea. |
| Education | Profile only | No issue. |
| Twitter/X |
From the application only — currently frozen the moment it's submitted
Relation to Britain, which plan interests you, how you heard about us, your elevator pitch, a book recommendation, service-provider introductions, gender (asked for event invitations). All of these are answered once at application and never revisited — some of that's genuinely fine, but a couple of these read more like profile content than one-time history, and go stale without anyone noticing. See Decision 6.
Member preferences
Private messaging on/off, and whether your funding info is visible to other members. These are just personal settings — nothing here needs to change.
The proposal
A smarter structure: ask once, branch from there
The clearest example of the current setup not quite working is exactly what you found this week: "what stage is my funding at" is a completely different question for a founder than it is for an investor. A founder has one current stage. An investor backs many stages at once — that's the whole job. Right now, both are forced through the same single-answer field, which is exactly why it kept breaking.
The fix isn't a cleverer field — it's asking "what kind of member are you" once, right at the start, and then only showing the questions that actually apply to that person from then on:
If they're a Founder / Executive
Show: current company stage (one answer), last funding round, total raised. Questions about their own company.
If they're an Investor
Show: which stages they invest in (can be several at once), instead of a single "current stage." Don't show Last Funding Type or Total Funding at all — those questions don't apply to what an investor does, so there's no reason to even ask.
This is a small idea with a big payoff: it means every field only ever holds one clear kind of answer, so we can validate it properly — which is exactly the thing that was missing before and let bad data in unnoticed. It also matches how Exec Focus Area already quietly works today (it only really makes sense for Executives) — we'd just be doing that on purpose everywhere, instead of by accident in one place.
And it's a pattern worth leaning into more broadly, not just for the fields we already have. Once we know someone's an investor, we could ask them something we don't collect at all today — which sectors they invest in (AI, Fintech, Climate, and so on). Turns out you'd independently landed on almost exactly this idea too — see Decision 7 below, now folded into one proposal together with yours.
Decision 1
DecidedFunding data — clean up & simplify
You've already seen why this matters: the recent bulk-edit issue that broke 200 contacts happened because a funding field allowed free text — someone wrote "Pre-Seed" instead of "Pre-seed", and it silently corrupted every future update to that contact. Digging into it properly, it turns out there are four different funding-related fields today, not two.
Thanks for spotting this — you're right that Stage means something different for investors (which stages a fund backs, often several at once) than for founders (their own single current stage). Since Mailchimp can't make one existing field sometimes single-choice and sometimes multi-choice, the clean fix is a new field just for investors — "Investment Stages," where several can be ticked at once — while Stage stays exactly as it is for everyone else. We'll move the ~49 investor records you flagged into this new field so nothing's lost. This is the same "ask once, branch from there" idea above, just applied to the very field that started this whole conversation.
| Field | What it's actually holding today | What we're doing |
|---|---|---|
| Stage | Clean — a founder's current funding round, chosen from a fixed list (Pre-seed, Seed, Series A, Series B+, Public). | Keep, for founders/companies — plus adding Bootstrapped as a new option, absorbing that value out of Funding Status below. |
| Investment Stages New | Doesn't exist yet — currently jammed into Stage as a comma-separated list for investors, which is what broke. | Building it — new field, same options as Stage, tick as many as apply. |
| Last Funding Type | Mostly round names too, just describing the last completed round rather than the current one. | Dropped. You confirmed it's fine to lose the distinction from Stage. |
| Total Funding | An amount, but typed inconsistently — we've seen "$124,355", "10M", and "$2,130,000,000" all in the same field. | Kept as a plain number — staff/internal viewing only, not shown to other members. |
| Funding Status | Used for several different things depending who filled it in — investor type ("VC", "Angel"), current activity ("Raising Seed"), or how they're funded ("Self Funded", "Bootstrapped"). | Retired entirely. Stage replaces it — the one genuinely distinct value, Bootstrapped, carries over as a new Stage option. |
Investment Stages — yes, multi-select, Stage staying as-is for founders. Funding Status — Stage can replace it, with fixed options so people can filter, and Bootstrapped added as one of those options. Last Funding Type — fine to lose that distinction now that it's redundant with Stage.
Decision 2
DecidedThe "Elevator Pitch" duplicate
An applicant's elevator pitch (from the application form) is currently saved in two different places: as a loose note on their contact record, which is where staff currently go to copy it for the newsletter intro, and separately as its own proper field, which isn't actually used by anything right now.
A · Make it a real field Recommended
Easier to find, search, and export in Mailchimp than digging through contact notes. Small change, no downside we can see.
B · Leave it as a note
Keep doing what you already do today — no change.
Option A — good question on how we handle existing members, since they've only ever had this in a note, never the field. We'll run a one-time migration to copy each contact's existing note into the new field, so nobody's left with a blank.
Decision 3
DecidedRemaining fields — still needed?
These exist in Mailchimp today but were added outside of any of the actual forms, so nobody's confirmed whether they're still genuinely used. Quick yes/no on each is all we need.
Exec Focus Area is confirmed in active use — we're adding "HR" as a valid option alongside Finance, Sales & Marketing, Operations, Product, Technical, and Legal. We're also clearing the one LinkedIn URL that couldn't be recovered (kane.halsey@pickr.works) since there was no valid link to put there.
| Field | What it currently holds | Still used? |
|---|---|---|
| Additional Companies | Used for end-of-year figures — e.g. crediting a past company's funding total to a founder who's since started something new. | Dropped |
| Silicon Valley or San Francisco? | A sub-question for members whose location is already "USA, Bay Area." | Keeping |
| Honours | Honorifics like MBE, OBE, CBE — used for place names at the Gala. | Keeping — staff-only |
Additional Companies — easiest to drop; it was only ever used ad hoc for end-of-year reporting, not worth carrying forward as a real field. Silicon Valley or San Francisco? — keeping, and it'll actually be useful once it's populated for everyone whose location is "USA, Bay Area." Honours — keeping, but staff-only: it's used for Gala place names, not something members need to see about each other.
Decision 4
DecidedIndustry — pick as many, or just one?
Right now the Apply Now form lets someone pick as many industries as apply (e.g. a company that's both "AI" and "Data"), but the profile editor only lets them pick one — so if someone updates their profile later, they can accidentally lose industries they originally gave you.
A · Pick as many as apply Recommended
Matches how most companies actually work, and matches what the application form already does — the profile editor is the one that needs to catch up.
B · Just one
Simpler, but forces a choice that isn't always real, and we'd lose detail for anyone who already gave you more than one.
Decision 5
DecidedLocation — how precise should it be?
The application form asks for one of 6 broad regions (e.g. "USA, Bay Area"). The member profile instead asks for an actual city, plus a country that isn't even shown on screen today. Worth picking one going forward, since it affects both what members see about each other and how useful the data is to you.
A · Real city & country
More useful long-term (real filtering, real member-matching later on), and it's what the profile already half-does today — just needs finishing properly, with country actually visible and editable.
B · Keep the broad regions Chosen
Simpler for members to fill in, matches what the application form already does, but loses precision — "USA, Other" doesn't tell you much.
Option B — you use the broad, filterable regions directly to send targeted member emails and connect members in the same city, and letting people free-type a location was producing answers like "Connecticut" or a small town rather than something usable. On top of that, we'll add an optional specific-city field alongside the region dropdown, for anyone who wants to give a real city (e.g. Manchester, rather than just "UK & EU, Other").
Decision 6
DecidedApplication answers — one-time history, or living profile fields?
Today, everything from the application form is frozen the moment it's submitted — nobody ever revisits it, and there's no way for a member to update it even if they wanted to. For most of these answers that's fine. But a couple of them are genuinely profile content, not just vetting data, and freezing them means they quietly go stale — the member has no idea their "elevator pitch" is three years old, or that we're still showing a book they mentioned once at sign-up.
More generally: the more current, accurate information we hold on a member, the more useful their profile is — both to other members and to any matching/recommendations the new app does. That argues for making genuinely profile-shaped answers editable, not just for archiving them.
| Field | What it's for today | Our take |
|---|---|---|
| Elevator Pitch | Written once at application. Already reused for newsletter intros, so it's really profile copy already. | Make it live — editable any time, same as Company or Job Title. |
| Book Recommendation | Written once, never revisited. Nice "getting to know you" detail for a member directory. | Make it live — same reasoning as Elevator Pitch. |
| Referral Source | How they first heard about GBX. | Keep as one-time history — pure acquisition data, nothing to update. |
| Introductions Requested | A one-off ask for staff to make an intro. | Keep as one-time history — it's a task to action once, not a trait to keep current. |
| Plan Interest (Innovate / Collaborate / Inspire) | A one-time signal staff use to recommend the right membership type at application. | Keep as one-time history — its job is done once the membership type is decided. |
| Relation to Britain, Gender | Used for vetting and event targeting, not shown to other members. | Genuinely your call — see below. |
Relation to Britain and Gender aren't really "profile content" the way Elevator Pitch is — nobody sees them but staff — so the staleness argument is weaker. Still worth deciding on purpose rather than by default:
A · Leave them frozen Recommended
Simplest option. Nobody's flagged these as wrong or out of date, and they're never shown to other members anyway.
B · Make them editable, privately
Lets a member correct their own answer without asking staff — but adds two more fields to the profile editor for something no one else ever sees.
Option A for Relation to Britain & Gender — leave them frozen, staff-only. And a nod on the rest: Elevator Pitch and Book Recommendation become live, editable profile fields, and Referral Source, Introductions Requested, and Plan Interest stay as one-time application history.
Decision 7
DecidedAngel investing — a new question, for everyone
Your note about adding an angel-investing question is really the same idea as the "sectors you invest in" thought we floated above — just arrived at from the other direction, and a better version of it. Ours assumed only people who pick Investor as their Contact Type would ever be asked. Yours doesn't — a Founder or Executive can just as easily be personally angel investing on the side, and our version would've missed every one of them.
"Do you angel invest?" — asked of everyone on the application form, not just Investors. If yes, three optional follow-ups: sweet spot cheque size (free text), stage (Pre-seed / Seed / Series A / Series B+), and industry (the usual list).
| Point | Where it landed |
|---|---|
| Overlap with Investors | Confirmed: shown as a live follow-up right after the "which best describes you" question on the same form — anyone who doesn't pick Investor there sees it, no lookup involved (for most applicants, this form is the first thing we know about them at all). "Stage" here is literally the same Investment Stages field from Decision 1, not a second one. |
| Sweet spot cheque size | Fixed range, not free text: <$10k / $10–25k / $25–50k / $50–100k / $100k+ — sanity-checked directly with Mark Charkin (an active angel investor), who confirmed the ranges look right. |
| Industry, reused Our call | Two fields sharing one picklist, not one field meaning different things: Industry stays "what a founder's company builds," and a new Sectors You Invest In field (same picklist) covers both VCs and angels — "what they invest in." Sector Agnostic added as an option on that second field only, for angels without a specific focus. |
All confirmed, including handing us the call on Industry — reusing the picklist felt right to you for founders, VCs, and angels alike, as long as angels (who are "sometimes more sector agnostic" than VCs) have a proper way to say so rather than being forced to pick specific sectors they don't really have.