// The situation

B2B App startup rolling out beta testing preparing to scale rapidly, piloting in GA + AL as we speak with multiple venues. Working within the nightlife scene, with venues directly, as well as multi venue organizations, and security companies that has a good amount of contracts & plans on implementing / mandating across all his venues eventually. every time im at one of his venues, i meet somebody else new & important it seems. My relationships are veery strategically built (as far as foundation goes) & my work can get very detailed & hectic, i need to record all my meetings, i want notes on individual connections, venues, i need to be able to show how my relationships are connected to one another (Would be awesome if this were possible just because i am a visual learner, but not mandatory.) I need to also be able to have organizations/companies owned by individuals, i need to assign contacts as employeess at certain venues (some work multiple locations) , as well as list all of the venues that are owned and/or within an organization. I also need to keep track of my tasks, follow ups, etc. & honestly, i feel as if the ideal system for me would be that i can literally train my tool on the company, so it literally knows every detail about my company so that i can essentially use ai to add records, notes, organize things, etc. and i dont ideally wanna preferably even have to do much input manually... i would like to just be able to freaking use the platform specifically when i need to dive deeper , strategize, gameplan , etc. with certain connections & truly keep track of everything. _____ I need you to find me the perfect crm or tools to start using for my stack here at the new startup. Lead channels: Walk-ins, Phone calls, Referrals, LinkedIn. Inquiry volume: 10–50.

The verdict · Jul 31, 2026

Yes.

You need a CRM — but not the one a sales rep will pitch you.

What's really going on

Your work is a graph, not a list. Every visit to that security guy's venues spins off two new contacts and three new relationships. 10–50 inquiries a month is low volume, but the entity model is heavy: People, Venues, Organizations, Security Companies, and the links between them. That's why every "simple" CRM you try will feel wrong — they only give you Contacts and Deals.

What to do instead

  1. Attio (Free tier — up to 3 users, 50,000 records, and 3 objects) — build Venues as a custom object; link People and Companies to it. It's an API-first CRM with a flexible data model built around custom objects, a Notion-like interface, and AI-powered attributes. Exactly the shape you described.
  2. Granola or Fathom (free tiers exist — check current pricing) — auto-transcribe every venue meeting on your phone. Push the summary into the right Attio record after each visit. That's the "don't type" part.
  3. Habit: every night, open Attio and link the day's new People to their Venue and Organization. Ten minutes. No AI does this cleanly yet.

Tonight, 30 min: sign up for Attio Free, create a custom object called Venues, add every GA + AL pilot venue, then add the security-company owner as a Person with an employment link to each venue he covers.

What you're being oversold

Reps will push Salesforce or HubSpot Sales Hub. Both bend you into a rigid Contacts+Companies+Deals schema; "person works four venues owned by two orgs under one security contract" gets ugly fast and expensive faster. Teams working with partnerships or relationship-heavy sales often choose Attio for its flexibility — that's you. Doing nothing costs you the exact thing you're building: by month three you won't remember which venue each new introduction runs, and the security-company owner's referrals stop compounding.

When to revisit this

When you need a fourth custom object (Events? Contracts?) or a second teammate past three seats.

The part worth getting right

Your object model is the one call that matters. Sketch it before you touch any tool. If Venues, Orgs, and People (with employment as the link) cover it, Attio Free holds you a year. If you also need Security Contracts, Rollouts, or Events as their own objects, you jump to Plus at $29/user/month billed annually — and Pro's call intelligence joins calls, records transcripts, and auto-populates CRM fields from the conversation at $69/user/month if you want the AI-records-my-meetings dream. Get the model wrong now and you rebuild in six months, or pay Pro for features you didn't need.

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