Should I use an Associated Contact or a Contact Reference Field?

Track the different people that related to a deal (founders, investors, sources...) using Associated Contacts or a Contact Reference Field.

Associated Contacts

TL;DR:  you can add many contacts to this field, and interactions with those contacts will appear in your deal's interaction log.

Associated contacts are already in your deal list (find them on the right-hand side of the deal page), these contacts are closely related to the deal and their interactions will appear in the deal's interaction log. When you add a contact as an associated contact, the contact's name will link to their page. You can add multiple contacts to the associated contacts section.

TL;DR: you can name this field anything you want, you can only add one contact per deal, and you can add contact details to the field. 

Another option is to add a Contact Reference field. You can customize the name of the field to whatever you'd like and link one contact to that field per deal. When you add a contact to that field, the contact's name will link to their contact page. You can even add details about the contact to this field - learn how to do that here. This is better if you do not want interactions being tracked, but want a contact to still have an association with a particular deal. A common use case here is to track contacts/institutions that are sourcing deals for your team.