Meet Dominique, Data and Operations Director at HearstLab

🦸🏻‍♀️What’s your superpower at work?

I’m surrounded by people who make it easy to do great work. I’ve had leadership that genuinely supports innovation, and I get to build for (and with) exceptionally brilliant people. I’ve also been lucky to work with companies I believe in, which is a huge motivator.

Helping people do their best work feels meaningful and selfishly, building for great brains makes me better. It pushes me to think differently, stretch how I approach systems, and co-create tools I never would’ve reached alone. Especially now, as we bring AI into more of what we do, it’s an exciting time to be a builder and a translator.

️ What advice would you give to someone just getting started with Airtable?

You don’t need to wait for permission to start learning! The no-code and Airtable communities are full of generous people and great resources - Airtable Community, BuiltOnAir, NoCodeOps (now part of Zapier), 9x. Follow the newsletters, attend events, post your questions. People will show up to help.

Start with your own personal or messy use cases, where stakes are low, but learning is high. And once you start building for your team or business, track the impact. How much time did that automation save? How many fewer pings or meetings are happening now that your data’s in one place? That kind of thinking not only makes you a stronger builder, but it also helps you lead. You’ll be better positioned to advocate for broader investment in no-code/AI education, resources, and tooling.

Where do you go for inspiration or new ideas — inside or outside your industry?

Sometimes I just need to get out of my own echo chamber. If I’m stuck, stepping away is usually the best thing I can do, even when my every instinct is to lock the doors and play escape room with the problem.

I love working on home renovation projects. Building something physical resets my brain and it helps me come back to digital work with a fresh perspective. If I build something cool over the weekend, I get a little ego boost that helps me show up on Monday with the right energy.

How Omni Is Transforming Hearstlab’s Re-evaluation Process

In the fast-paced world of venture capital, staying ahead of the curve is paramount. For Dominique Festa (@D_F), Data and Operations Director at HearstLab, a significant challenge emerged from their revisit pipeline: over 475 startups flagged for re-evaluation. There was a clear opportunity to enhance their proactive engagement, and Dominique envisioned a more intelligent, proactive approach.

Leveraging Airtable Omni, she built a system that fundamentally changes how HearstLab plans to revisit potential investments. This system is designed to automatically resurface passed startups every 180 days — effectively doubling their previous review cadence without adding any team capacity!

At the heart of this transformation, we see:

• Field Agents enrich company growth metrics, providing crucial, up-to-date information.
• The system compares before-and-after data (team size, funding, product stage), giving a clearer picture of progress.
• It assesses alignment with their investment thesis, ensuring consistent evaluation.
• It generates rationales to support re-evaluation decisions, lightening the lift for decision-makers.

The Impact: Earlier Engagement, Better Insights

The expected impact on HearstLab's operations is significant:

• Doubled review cadence: They will be able to review startups twice as often without increasing team size.
• Reduced research bottlenecks: Automated data enrichment significantly reduces the manual burden on their team.
• More timely engagement: They can now engage with promising startups before they re-enter fundraising, potentially improving their future engagement.
• Consistent evaluation: Omni-generated rationales and enriched data fields ensure a systematic and trustworthy evaluation process.

This innovative solution is poised to fundamentally change how HearstLab manages its revisit pipeline, moving from a more manual process to a proactive, Omni-driven engine for identifying and engaging with promising investments!

Copy & Paste AI Builder Prompt 

From there, she worked with Omni to keep refining the interface, testing things as she went and making small, targeted changes, one at a time. This helped avoid overwrites and made it easier to track what was successful.

Dominique learned she got better results when she framed prompts around what the venture team needed to see or decide instead of focusing on the schema. For example: “They should see old vs. new data side by side to evaluate progress” or “They should only see startups they personally own.”

In other words, it helped to think more like a user than a builder. If she felt like Omni wasn’t getting what she was asking for, she’d stop and ask if what she wanted was even possible. This saved her from spinning her wheels on things that weren’t currently supported.

Here’s the field agent prompt she ultimately used for ‘Startup team size:’

Did this use case inspire you? Drop a comment below if you try Dominique’s builder prompt and share how you’re using Airtable to change the way you work for a chance to be our next Change Maker spotlight!