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Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

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Re: Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

#71

Post by mceoin »

luke-stanley wrote: post #63
aerosmile wrote: post #19

It’s amazing that Microsoft - given their focus on AI and decades of experience in spreadsheets - doesn’t offer this type of functionality. Corporate bureaucracy vs startup agility!

Actually Microsoft do now have Copilot and Python in Excel recently released last week. Maybe a bit slow.

Platform wise, the equivalent would be if they combined Excel, PowerBI, Data Factory and Azure into a single tool.

Technically you can combine these, but it’s a cumbersome experience and difficult for most people. Vertically integrating their equivalents simplifies things a lot.

(Small note: we don’t currently offer Python to users but likely will at some point)

Re: Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

#72

Post by temac »

luke-stanley wrote: post #63
aerosmile wrote: post #19

It’s amazing that Microsoft - given their focus on AI and decades of experience in spreadsheets - doesn’t offer this type of functionality. Corporate bureaucracy vs startup agility!

Actually Microsoft do now have Copilot and Python in Excel recently released last week. Maybe a bit slow.

I dont know if the Python in Excel architecture as changed but last time i saw it, it was insane and unusable for me (data sent to MS servers where a linux container executes python: you need both a subscription and that the data in question not be regulated)

Re: Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

#73

Post by theGnuMe »

mmckelvy wrote: post #41
threeseed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minus the AI part tools like this have existed for decades. And companies are not dumping their SaaS tools and switching to them en masse. Because (a) data silos have dramatically increased pushing dreams of a unified data schema out of reach, (b) technology stacks have become far more complex necessitating tools like Datadog and (c) competition is stronger than ever meaning that skimping on paying for tools like Mix…

Not yet. But in the analytics case, suppose you could build a tool that collected data on your own infrastructure, allowed you to write plain SQL against a PostgreSQL database to get whatever analytics data you need, had an AI-driven text-to-SQL option so non-technical users could get whatever analytics data _they_ need, and output everything to a universal interface, i.e. a spreadsheet? No vendor flavored DSL, GUI,…

Managed services are useful.

Re: Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

#76

Post by dioptre »

jadbox wrote: post #69
primitivesuave wrote: post #43

This is incredible. I uploaded a CSV with ~6000 rows containing campaign finance data for a particularly corrupt local politician and asked "what was the total contributed amount in [year]". Not only did it produce the correct answer (in around the same amount of time it took me to calculate it on my end) but it also seemed to understand that the spreadsheet was related to campaign finance in the "summary" portion of…

Can Office 365 Copilot do this too?

We are a generally a generation ahead of sheets and excel. You might be able to do some of the things in the older software but it won't be a button press. The ability for you to run data queries (and let the AI do it for you) next to the traditional A1 notation we invented.

Re: Show HN: Sourcetable – AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform

#77

Post by mceoin »

jacobjellyfish wrote: post #64

This looks great! Well done. My concern is that there's not a single mention of data privacy. Which is is a red flag for any one coming from an enterprise world. Get that sorted and I'd consider using your tool for actual work.

Hi - we encrypt everything at rest and use metadata to improve LLM performance.

We don't yet have enterprise-grade data permissioning or compliance certificates like Soc2. Those will come in time.

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