
Airtable raises $100M at a $1.1B valuation - kbyatnal
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/15/airtable-maker-of-a-coding-platform-for-non-techies-raises-100m-at-a-1-1b-valuation/
======
keithwhor
I just wanted to give a big congratulations to Howie and team, as I'm pretty
confident all founders read comments on their HN posts. ;)

I was introduced to Airtable by some of their investors. Within days I had
recommended it to our customer advocacy team, who now use it as a lightweight
but fully customizable CRM (without having to go "full Salesforce", we're a
small team!). I've since recommended it to some of _our_ investors for things
like providing LPs with access to fund portfolio co info / etc. who initially
had said things to me like, "I don't really get it."

I think the product is category-defining, and it's amazing to see Howie's
ambition beyond being a $B unicorn. :) Great work all around, and it's
absolutely _amazing_ driving by your billboard on the 280 coming back from
work. I'm sure it feels great, and it's something all startup founders and cos
yearn for - really awesome to see a great product and team succeed!

~~~
austhrow743
Sales person here. I use it as my own lightweight crm and it works well.

I should send them an email. I'm sure a good chunk of that investment will go
towards building out their sales team.

------
Kaveren
I use Airtable for my job, mostly as a project management application. This
may be an unusual use case, but I find myself limited at many times.

I feel like Airtable is very unresponsive. On the community forums, they seem
to communicate rarely, and not implement very simple functionality for long
periods of time. Very good features that would be highly beneficial and should
take a weekend go months without even a reply.

It's death by a thousand cuts for me. Sorts in Kanban view don't automatically
resort when you add cards, so you have to manually resort every time. No rich
text formatting on cards. Copying tables doesn't copy the field type. There's
so many minor things I'd like changed.

None of the problems by themselves are deal-breakers by themselves, and I will
continue to use Airtable (Trello, for instance, does not offer the field
customization I love about Airtable). But I can't help but think execution can
be so much better.

It's almost like nobody at Airtable pays attention to the design of features.
Everything is so limited. Blocks are an incredibly useful idea, but in
practice uncustomizable and not something I find helpful.

It's a good product, but not a _great_ product.

I've been considering working on my own product in this line. At least if
nobody else uses it, I'll be able to.

~~~
hadsed
There is one lurking competitor to Airtable that no one knows: Notion.

Except Notion is far more capable than Airtable. You can do all these table
joins across pages but in Notion everything is a page whereas in Airtable it's
just a form. That is the ultimate flexibility which makes it exceptionally
well suited for any kind planning effort. And it's a great canvas for creative
projects.

It's amazing to see that there's a billion dollar company building something
comparatively so... bad.

Plus Notion has some of the best customer service around. Half the company are
there for support!

~~~
ksec
I don't understand why there aren't more people using Notion.

It is like a better looking BaseCamp + Airtable in one.

~~~
trystero
Airtable is web-based, Notion is for desktop use with Windows and macOS
clients.

I use neither of them but my preference goes to the web since I work on Linux.

~~~
Kaveren
Notion has a web application you can use, no need to download.

------
erikpukinskis
I think in general we’re about at the limit if “one size fits all” UIs
especially for things as personal as workflows, customer data, etc.

I’ve long thought the idea of “A Todo App” makes no sense because everyone
works a little differently. That’s why apps like Pivotal Tracker are such
garbage... they support too many use cases to do anything well.

The problem is if you try to make it configurable, you still have all the
complexity behind the scenes. And your configuration UI recapitulates that
hell.

So there is a need for someone to come in and start over with a more
configurable foundation and maintain really serious software engineering
discipline so that the base layer doesn’t get infected with individual
business requirements (which will eventually be infinite).

I don’t envy Airtable trying to do this with a big client roster and huge
scale. I think the problem would be easier solved in a smaller company with
less pressure from investment timeline.

BUT if they’ve already solved the problem, or at least solved it to their
satisfaction, then they will be fine and the platform can get as convoluted as
they need to make their clients happy.

It’s only if there’s research remaining, core UI questions to be solved, that
they’ll have a hard time competing with whomever comes to eat their lunch.

~~~
naeemtee
I've been fortunate in building a consultancy that's grown pretty quickly
almost entirely based on this insight
([https://superwork.io](https://superwork.io)). We've helped some companies
basically 2x just by dumping their existing SaaS-based processes.

The days of one-size-fits-all SaaS are numbered.... most companies can find
massive efficiency gains through smart deployment of tools like Airtable and
Zapier with turnkey automations.

There used to be a time this wasn't feasible because the only option was to
hire a development team and deal with legacy software - we don't have that
problem anymore.

~~~
pmarreck
"We're world leaders in automation & optimization. We know our shit."

Ha, brave language!

~~~
omarchowdhury
Quite brave. I'd A/B test that with something more benign to see how it's
really performing.

------
harrybr
It's worth knowing that Airtable uses some nasty dark patterns.

Airtable has a share button much like Google Docs. If you're on the free tier
of Airtable, and you use the share button, you receive $ credits on your
account when a user accepts the invite into you "workspace". So it lulls you
into a pattern of sharing widely.

When you go premium, use of that "share" button has the opposite effect.
Instead of receiving credits, you are automatically, silently billed for each
person that joins your workspace. There is no warning in the UI that this will
happen. It's completely invisible [1]. In my first month of being a premium
Airtable user, they billed me over $2000 USD onto my credit card - without any
warning whatsover. This is because about 10 people in my team accepted shares.
They also do some other weird stuff with accounts, e.g. if you create a
premium account, it's only premium for one workspace (a workspace is
effectively a folder of databases with its own permissions). If you create
another workspace, it's set to the "free" tier and you have to pay all over
again. Team subscriptions with multiple workspaces get very expensive, because
they multiply up in some way. The pricing is model very opaque.

It pains me when start-ups are successful using cruddy growth hacking tricks
like this because it tells then next generation of start-ups "This is how you
do it".

[1]
[https://twitter.com/harrybr/status/1030195061550710784](https://twitter.com/harrybr/status/1030195061550710784)

~~~
Aissen
How was your specific issue resolved in the end ? Were you refunded ?

~~~
trystero
Another team that I know had the same problem, they were refunded apparently
without problem. But this strikes me as shady... Are they hoping a significant
number of clients will not ask for a refund?

~~~
harrybr
That’s how this sort of play works. It’s about capturing a percentage who
don’t notice - plus those who do notice but see their time as too valuable to
justify spending the time to request a refund.

I believe It’s unlikely that anyone would ever welcome a totally unexpected
charge to their credit card.

------
jamesmcintyre
People keep calling out how this isn't a new solution/idea (i.e. MS Access,
FileMaker, SmartSheet, Google Sheets + Scripts, Knack) and those people I hope
understand that Airtable's success has everything to do with their execution
of this idea not that the idea is somehow groundbreaking.

I've used many of those ^ products and I can tell you they are no where near
Airtable's level of UX. The Airtable team has obviously taken a lot of time
and energy to really nail the design and user experience instead of making
another "just good enough".

I think this is also a good example of how desperate users will resort to
using subpar products or cobbling-together numerous subpar solutions if the
problem is painful enough. Having used MS Access a decade ago I can tell you
it was out of desperation and it never really solved the problem- it sort of
got you ~75% there.

One last thing I'll mention is that when you take on something as flexible as
Airtable you end up dealing with an much larger dimension of possible edge-
cases and more importantly you end up challenging designers to craft
constraints on the users very thoughtfully so that you're not limiting them
but also you're not overwhelming them with too much complexity. In other
words- solutions in this space succeed precisely because they figure out how
to walk that fine line not because the idea itself is earth-shattering.

~~~
titanomachy
Great execution involves new solutions and ideas, though. After seeing this
post, I tried creating an airtable for a project I'm working on (finding a new
condo to buy) and one thing that really stood out to me was that after filling
the table with some data, airtable _automatically generated a documented API_
that I could use to upload data to my table. Slick execution, yes, but also a
novel idea as far as I know. Granted, I'm not super familiar with all the
other solutions.

------
josephpmay
Their main competitor Fieldbook shut down earlier this year. I liked Fieldbook
better because it was faster and had a cleaner UI, but Airtable always had
more features and better pricing. I’ve migrated over to Airtable now, and I’m
happy they’ve raised this round because they’re definitely here to stay.

~~~
nickelcitymario
Their main competitor should be considered Salesforce.

I know at my own company we moved to Salesforce NOT because of its CRM
capabilities, but because it's basically a managed database with app-building
capabilities. Lots of point-and-click stuff, and lots of development tools
too.

I think we're just starting to see this space heat up. The basic capabilities
have existed forever at the "enterprise" level (think SAP, Oracle, Microsoft
with Access and Sharepoint, etc).

But the focus on making the promise of relational databases available to
everyone -- with minimal computer science expertise required -- is what's sort
of new and, in my opinion, now taking off.

~~~
ben_jones
Our org uses Salesforce for exactly that purpose. Unfortunately the deeper
reality is that the value in this database is that non-database-savvy
individuals can arbitrarily modify the data schema through a simple GUI tool
leading to Objects/Tables with hundreds of fields, computed properties, and
other often undocumented pitfalls and dependencies.

As might be expected this yields large numbers of performance penalties and
application level work-arounds that deeply slow application development and
neuter the quality of often business-critical tools.

It's my theory that the reason such platforms are allowed to exist without
employees immediately breaking out in open rebellion is because the users of
Salesforce and similar products are often non-technical enterprise workers
whose quality bar has been welded by management and past experiences to be
lower than the Mariana Trench.

~~~
nickelcitymario
This is definitely a real challenge. No argument from me.

I think the niche where this product can thrive -- and its a huge niche -- is
all those small-to-medium size businesses that have so far been running things
through a hodge podge of unconnected spreadsheets, obsolete special-purpose
applications, and lots and lots of paper.

It's easy as a programmer to more or less forget that most people, when facing
a task or challenge, do not think: "I wonder what the most efficient way to do
this might be, and if technology could help." Instead, it's: "What methods do
I already know that I could apply to this problem?"

More often than not, the answer is paper. And email. Or excel.

So this type of the-database-is-everything app has huge value. Unfortunately
it won't be run entirely by engineers with 10+ years of experience in what
makes for good database best practice.

It's the trade-off we have to make.

In return, we get:

\- A single system that has access to all of the business' data (rather than a
dozen different "systems" [if they can be called that] which do not
interoperate in any way, with endless duplication and data entry. \-
Customization (for better and worse) \- Radically simplified I.T.: Just give
everyone a chromebook and be done with it. \- Access to these systems anywhere
in the world (cause it's web)

It's better than paying a bookkeeper to (literally) manage paper-based
ledgers.

------
laurex
As a researcher, I have been completely impressed by how Airtable has changed
the game for collecting and sharing information. Howie has been personally
interested and the whole team takes a strong interest in hearing the needs of
an incredible diverse set of users and improving things as they grow. I have
run a research program from Airtable, connected tons of different inputs and
outputs using Zapier, and even planned a wedding inside it. It's not really a
"one size fits all" product, it's more a portal for 'regular people' to get
the value of a relational database without any coding, which ends up being
extensible in the same way as say, Wordpress or Drupal (without the actual
pain of Wordpress for the most part). (Edit for spelling)

------
rgrieselhuber
Howie is a great CEO and super helpful in the startup community.
Congratulations on this well-deserved milestone.

I would love it if they supported white labeling embeds of their products into
other apps. I'm guessing there is a huge need for this.

------
asien
That’s really impressive in such short time...

I think they have managed to come up with a product that appeals to everyone
while giving a lot of freedom to non tech users.

There has been a lot of attempts to make « coding product » for « non coder »
but ultimately DataTable is probably the most convenient way to do it as the
majority of workforce is used to excel or Google Spreadheet...

Personally I love their pricing and the concept but I found the UI super heavy
and not that much intuitive .

------
hammerbrostime
Weird valuation. Ok app, had to write it off because of lack of offline
support.

I'm surprised this isn't a non starter for more people/companies.

~~~
superfrank
I'm curious as to why you feel offline support is such a big deal?

Maybe my perspective is warped by living in a major US city, but I'm pretty
much connected to the internet all the time. I'm pretty sure the only time I
disconnect and have my computer on me is when I'm on a plane.

So much of my other work requires the access to the internet and the ability
to communicate, I just don't see the need for offline mode. To put it another
way, I can't see many situations where I could effectively do my job (outside
of some minor tasks) without internet access, even if Airtable was available
offline.

I do agree that it's a nice to have, but I just don't see it as a deal
breaker.

~~~
hammerbrostime
I work in NYC. The most efficient form of transportation is the subway, and
phone signals are not great down there. If you take a train out of the city,
there are huge dead zones. There is at least an hour of my day that I am
trying to be productive that I do not have good internet connections.

------
psteinweber
Airtable is great - I use it every day. It's perfect for anything in-between
document and spreadsheet; when you have to deal with database-like entries
that are awkward to handle with a word processor or spreadsheet.

I was hoping that Dropbox might acquire Airtable one day, and integrates it
into Dropbox Paper. That would put them ahead of Quip, Coda and the like in an
instant (for my use case).

------
nkg
I understand it's some kind of killer app, but I still don't get it.

~~~
keithwhor
The tl;dr for a more technically-minded person:

It's a database primarily operated upon using a spreadsheet interface. You can
create different representations (literally Views) of your data / rows. You
can add custom logic "blocks" to rows / entries / tables that, for example,
send a text message to a customer in the table.

You can arrive at Airtable as a product from first principles by basically
just saying: most applications are CRUD apps atop a database with some custom
callouts to external APIs. What if the database was super easy for a non-
technical person to manage, we could provide data insertion / retrieval in a
few standardized views, and there were integrations for the most popular 3rd
party services upon record creation / editing / etc.?

You're not going to build a brand new consumer app on Airtable, but all of the
backoffice and internal crap we write over and over and over again... it's a
really good option for simplifying those processes and is accessible to non-
developers.

~~~
mdorazio
Thanks for this explanation. Serious question, though - what is the core
benefit over using Google Sheets + Apps Script? Is it just a better UI layer
and baked-in API access, or is there an underlying structure of some sort
that's superior?

~~~
duderific
It's funny how people say things like " _just_ a better UI layer", when to
non-techies, the application IS the UI, and the only thing that matters (as
long as the performance is acceptable) is features and ease of use.

------
abhiyerra
For a lot of simple apps I write now I just use Airtable as the database with
some caching to avoid rate limiting. It works great even at scale.

~~~
chiefalchemist
I susoect that's where the growth is / will be. Care to share a repo or two on
anything you've done using AT? tia

~~~
abhiyerra
Last year we used Airtable with 60 volunteers working concurrently on the site
updating a Base to collect and organize information to help the Sonoma County
fire victims. The Rails code is a very light wrapper on Airtable and if I were
to do it again I would just write a Sinatra / NodeJS interface. (I didn't know
JS at the time) We had about 130000 page views all backed by Airtable as the
DB.

Specifically: [https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-
pages/...](https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org/blob/gh-
pages/FireResponse/config/initializers/airtable.rb)

Also working on a MTurk interface for Airtable (A Big WIP):
[https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine](https://github.com/workmachine/workmachine)

~~~
cpeterso
If the volunteers are using a Rails app to access the Base, who is accessing
the Base directly in Airtable? Was Airtable just a convenient data backend to
get the Rails app up quickly?

~~~
abhiyerra
Sorry, they were using the base directly on airtable. The rails app was just a
thin layer to hide the apikey and cache the data so we weren't hammering
Airtable directly.

~~~
cpeterso
That makes sense. I see how Airtable's user permissions (Owner, Creator,
Editor, Commenter, Read-only) allow someone to quickly create a useful CRUD
app that is safer than letting people randomly edit a Google Spreadsheet. :)

------
pololee
This is the information I found [https://www.businessinsider.com/airtable-
review-guide-app-wa...](https://www.businessinsider.com/airtable-review-guide-
app-walkthrough-spreadsheets-tables-blocks-2018-3)

> Tesla uses airtable to track inventory of vehicles as they leave the
> factory; $20 billion office-space startup WeWork is a customer, too.

I've tried airtable and used the tool to plan my trip to Japan. It's great. I
heard a few iOS developers use airtable as a lightweight backend instead of
firebase.

I like its idea and design. I was trying to use it as replacement of my
evernote (It's probably too weird to you). Then one day, I found
[https://notion.so](https://notion.so). I decided to switch to it. It's faster
and have offline support. But the only missing part is notion.so doesn't have
API yet.

------
chiefalchemist
I've used AT a couple times but not recently. It was useful and solid.

I have to assume the $1.1B is based on more API usage and/or their backed as a
broader servive.

I think AT is useful but none the less not everyone is ready, willing and able
to use such a tool. I certainly wish them well. I'm still overwhelmed by that
$1.1B. Just me?

~~~
keithwhor
Revenue is on track for $20M in 2018 [1]. While $1.1B could be considered high
by some, it's a done deal now, Airtable is a real business pulling real
revenue, and their continued execution and direction will determine the rest.
:)

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2018/11/15/move-s...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2018/11/15/move-
slow-and-make-things-airtables-howie-liu-built-a-1b-software-giant-
emphasizing-substance-over-speed/#78a83b9d1f20)

~~~
zaroth
For a SaaS founder with 20% growth, $1MM ARR and 95% gross margin, hoping to
even get within spitting distance of a 2x multiple, that 50x is one hell of a
thing.

Now exit and raise are very different valuations, but 50x...

~~~
trhway
Not to offend. Just compare the AT growth. In SV the growth is what valued,
with revenue and profit being the distant 2nd and 42nd.

~~~
zaroth
Zero offense taken.

The VCs know what they are doing. Growth is absolutely king because it’s where
you are going not where you are.

Profits would be like dividends - literally counting against you for not
knowing what better to do with the money and instead giving 20%+ away to
_taxes_.

Consistent (aka stagnant) profit is like running a zombie startup. Very
difficult to exit that.

~~~
chiefalchemist
> "Consistent (aka stagnant) profit is like running a zombie startup. Very
> difficult to exit that."

I think you might have inadvertently adjusted - in a good way - the valuation
lens. That is, it's not about valuation per se in the more traditional sense
but valuation relative to exit / the ability to exit.

That is to the VCs, that's ultimately the goal / figure that matters. And
their POV takes form of the public (to so speak) valuation. Put another way,
it's not about the (broader) market per se, it's about the VC market.

That is, now $1.1B kinda makes sense.

------
yannis7
met the co-founder Howie at a dinner in San Fran back in 2012 - I think the
app was called Grid back then? Very passionate and driven, I remember him
leaving the event early to work on the app.

I also remember my typical cynicism (held to myself of course) when he
described the idea (what's this, Excel for ipads??!).. But now with a $1.1B
valuation, wow - so well done to him and his team!

~~~
glaugh
I believe you’re thinking of a different startup, Grid, from the YC S12 batch.
Howie was a YC alum from a previous batch, but Airtable didn’t go through YC.

(I was in the YC S12 batch and am friends with Howie)

------
egeozcan
I wonder the database structure behind airtable-like flexible data apps. I
suppose they would create databases and tables on the fly to increase
performance - or maybe they just use unstructured (or flexibly structured)
databases like mongodb?

~~~
gary__
"First off, we're huge fans of both Meteor and Asana. I spoke with Geoff @
Meteor a couple years ago when we were first starting to build out the
Airtable product and was very impressed by their approach and vision. We've
closely followed the developer blogs of both those projects (and in Meteor's
case, their source code). With those learnings, we built our own realtime
database engine that supports relational data (which Meteor doesn't yet
support) and also some other major features like the ability to undo any user
action out of order (like git revert), which is necessary to support undo in a
multi-user context (because the last thing that you did may not be the last
change globally if other people are concurrently making changes). Undo is a
particularly challenging feature to implement in a structured relational
database context, because it can't be reduced to a set of simplistic character
insertion operations as is the case for a google word doc, or a spreadsheet
(which is a simple 2d array of values without type constraints, foreign key
relations, etc)."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8374468)

------
laserson
So many people use Excel/Google Sheets as a database rather than a
spreadsheet, except you don't get any of the advantages of a database. It's
astounding to me that there hasn't really been a webapp that's essentially
just a nice collaborative frontend for a SQL database, which is how I use
Airtable in my lab. I'm very happy to see they're on a sustainable path, and I
hope they continue to support the use case of just-a-database. Congrats!

------
bePoliteAlways
Very Nice interface. Takes things to the next level. However seeing the word
workflow I assumed that there will be visual graphical representation of "my
task" for a given project. It will show dependencies between the tasks. I
assumed it will be show me the different steps visually with a nice diagram
and I can drill into things to see subtask if required etc. (edited to make it
more clearer)

------
hayksaakian
I guess I just don't get it.

In what use cases does airtable outshine google sheets?

~~~
justaguyhere
The UI is much better than Google Sheets (Sheets is likely better for power
users), multiple views (calendar, Kanban), attachments etc. You could also set
relationships between tables, which as far as I know, you can't do in Sheets.

The number of rows allowed per table is too low for any data driven serious
application - this explains why it is used by smaller companies and
individuals. A non-tech person can set up a handful of tables and be up and
running in minutes.

I am a fan, though I wish they allowed more rows per table.

~~~
thirdsun
> I am a fan, though I wish they allowed more rows per table.

I agree. Like the product, but being constrained by a rather limited number of
records even in their expensive pro plans makes it a non-starter.

------
kradroy
Good luck to them. Although I don't feel a spreadsheet is the most flexible
representation of a "database", it's probably useful for their audience - non-
dev knowledge workers. If they could bake in GDPR compliance tools, they'd
probably be able to capture some enterprise customers.

~~~
bduerst
I'm not a user but I did look at their product a while back. It seems like
it's more of a spreadsheet UI for data tables, which is the next step for
spreadsheets IMO.

You could argue there are extensions, scripts, plugins etc. that also do this
but it seems Airtables are built for it from the ground up.

------
jayonsoftware
Looks like [https://www.filemaker.com/](https://www.filemaker.com/) is looking
at competing. I with Microsft does the same with access

------
ianmcgowan
There's definitely a market for something like this, the question is how big.
I used DabbleDB back in the day, and it was great, but perhaps a little early
to the party. The competition to Airtable is not just SalesForce and
Sharepoint, but also all the janky access db's and excel-macro laden informal
systems that get built at big companies. It's not hard to be better than that.
And if an Airtable app grows to the point of needing a rewrite, then congrats-
you've just got past MVP...

------
austinhutch
A month or so back I tried experimenting with Airtable based on glowing
reviews on HN and elsewhere. I really hated the on-boarding process which
forced me into a template (contact list, schedule, todo) when I just wanted
the equivalent of a blank google sheet. The concept of structured data
collection in a user interface that anyone can ramp up on is very compelling
but I didn't even pass go.

------
eatonphil
Big fan of Airtable. Been using them for a month now trying to find a
hosted/paid alternative to using both Google Drive and Trello.

------
itronitron
Shouldn't Tableau already own this space seeing as they are the swiss army
knife for whittling relational data?

------
tejasmanohar
Anyone know what their revenue multiplier is? I was pretty surprised when I
saw the $1B number.

------
andrewstuart
I use AirTable. Impressive product.

It feels to me like a successful implementation of Lotus Notes for the web.

------
tzm
I remember getting an interview invite to YC S2012 for MetaModeler
(spreadsheet.io), a spreadsheet-database service. Seemed the timing was right,
but the pitch was off at the time. Great seeing a Airtable execute on a
similar vision.

------
gary__
Their Show HN in 2014, some interesting tidbits about the design.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8373914)

------
wheelzr
Ok, so it's SmartSheet with API integrations.

Could be good solution to simplify managing multiple sites through API calls.

Basically creating a spreadsheet with external calls. And a sexy ass website.

~~~
a13n
Could be a good solution to ___________.

I think there are a TON of answers that you could fill in the blank with.

------
mitchill
Honestly Airtable is the future, I'm very excited to watch it grow. 90% of
software I create for enterprise companies is just spreadsheets on the cloud.

------
ptd
I use airtable everyday. Awesome tool for education.

------
r_singh
Revenue numbers aren't mentioned in the article. Does anyone know about the
multiple (valuation/revenue) they've raised at?

~~~
tschellenbach
I'm guessing 20-25x revenue. Probably around 40m in ARR?

~~~
orliesaurus
You're telling me AirTable makes more money than Zapier? wow

~~~
toomuchtodo
Valuations are not always straightfoward, and we don't know Airtable's ARR. I
see Airtable as an Excel + Repl SaaS replacement. Does that have a larger
market available to it? Maybe! Also, it doesn't appear Airtable has any
competitors in the space (whereas your example has multiple competitors;
MuleSoft is at ~$300 million/year in revenue, Microsoft doesn't break out
their Flow service revenue unfortunately).

I think Airtable and Zapier are both great products, and recommend both to
clients, but they have different use cases.

~~~
orliesaurus
What's the most impressive Airtable use-case that comes to your mind, since
you recommend it to clients? I'm trying to think of something that Google
Spreadsheet + Zapier add-ons don't cover...can't come up with much

~~~
toomuchtodo
A client has a popular t-shirt production business and brand that does around
$60 million a year in revenue and they're using Airtable as their process
workflow tool (inventory, shipping, production, etc). They'll eventually
graduate to a traditional ERP system, they're just not ready yet.

Also, I don't find Google Spreadsheet to be a compelling tool for anything
mission critical.

~~~
orliesaurus
Thanks for sharing!

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toomuchtodo
Happy to help, a rising tide lifts all boats.

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rawoke083600
Well done ! Looks amazing

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sonnyblarney
The product is novel and interesting - it's in a way an 'obvious' spin on an
old classic. It works well.

As soon I tried it, my immediate thought was how on freaking earth, Google nor
MS with their billions haven't been doing this long ago. Their products
haven't changed much in a while, do they have anyone running product
experiments?

That said, my company is full of languishing, unmaintained spreadsheets, like
a big mess cobble of data ... I wonder how this might spread to the corporate
world.

~~~
keithwhor
> my immediate thought was how on freaking earth, Google nor MS with their
> billions haven't been doing this long ago.

My biggest takeaways so far, running an early stage startup and working around
and with Enterprise cos and "late stage startups" (i.e. $10B+).

\- Large cos can move _surprisingly_ slowly, especially around significant
product updates and improvements.

\- Large cos, to varying degrees, have a tendency to stifle innovation
inadvertently via internal politics: those with the ambition to make change
often don't have the lateral freedom to execute.

These are mostly a function of being a victim of success: you move slowly
because you don't want to alienate an existing, paying userbase and you have
politics because of policy and process that have helped you reach massive
scale.

Startups (i.e. Airtable) have a massive advantage early on if they stay lean
for as long as possible before nailing product-market fit and scaling, because
it's easier to make "alienating changes" to your product and innovate when you
have fewer customers and little revenue. Politics also haven't yet set in as a
defining characteristic. To my knowledge, Airtable did a fantastic job early
on at executing carefully, clearly defining their product / market and
understanding their customer before scaling.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Fully agree that is essentially it - however - Google and MS are not slouches.
They have the ability to have cracker jack teams work on stuff ... and maybe
the ability to spurn out a different product that meets different needs and to
not 'alienate' customers.

Though I wonder if a bunch of Airtable-like features in Google Sheets would be
alienating. They're features that don't have to be used.

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ryanjodonnell
Welcome to nubtown

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richsinn
lol

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JungleGymSam
They will ban you from their community if you ask them to explain why they are
not implementing certain features that are being requested over and over for
years.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Sounds annoying. I'm assuming you weren't satisfied with the answer (even if
implied) of "it's not our priority right now"?

~~~
JungleGymSam
Problem is they often delete posts that have more than a slight hint of
dissatisfaction in them. If they had provided that answer before, I, and
others, couldn't know. The thread I am remembering had no responses from staff
and multiple asking for an answer. Then it was gone. Then my account was
temporarily banned.

It left a REALLY sour taste for me. That's the first time that's happened to
me and I express my desire for features often.

I know this is just a single anecdote but it was a really heavy-handed
approach.

edit: I actually REALLY REALLY like Airtable. That's part of why I am so
"traumatized" by it. My colleagues were getting annoyed with how much I was
raving about it. "We could do so much with this and it's easy to use to use
too!"

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LeonM
Totally offtopic, but the screenshot on the top of the page shows the Airtable
dashboard with a fictional magazine cover about the "best in class American
cruiser" with a Ferrari in the background... And a GM logo next to it...

This screenshot comes from Airtable's press package. If you are releasing
press material, at least check it for facts first.

