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Airtable gets $52M in funding
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Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#22Airtable is exactly what https://transpose.com/ Transpose could have been. But better. Been using it for just about everything you can think of. Did not know about the Blocks feature. Awesome. I got fairly good with Transpose until they closed up shop. Fieldbook and Airtable definitely can do things that Trello (cannot do tables) and Evernote (can do tables but very limited) cannot. There is a huge middle ground betw…
I hate to burst your bubble- but taking on investments like this probably indicates they’ll be looking for a buy out/sell out eventually
How so? Raising Series B/C usually prices companies out of smaller M&A deals. I would take it as a signal they're in it for the long haul.
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate to burst your bubble- but taking on investments like this probably indicates they’ll be looking for a buy out/sell out eventually
How so? Raising Series B/C usually prices companies out of smaller M&A deals. I would take it as a signal they're in it for the long haul.
Unless airtable becomes its own thing worth a multiple of 50M $... they’ll prob need to sell. It just doesn’t seem like an IPOable business to me.
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#24As an avid Excel and GSheet user, it's nice and slick with a few more bells and whistles. Very clean and probably good for an organization with members who are not very good with sheets in general or have a hard time mapping data mentally; akin to a better designed SmartSheet.
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#25Glad to see this company get more funding. Last year I ported all of our companys excel and access files over to airtable. Currently tweaking with their API to work with a MS-SQL database using amazon Lambda and RDS at the moment. Their API documentation is fantastic, some of the best I've seen as well. They even have some of the best case studies for workflow management as well, posted on their blog, for setting up…
Can I ask what actual business functions these spreadsheets are for?
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#26I wish our company had this 10 years ago. Everybody was using and mis-using Excel for everything, whether it's requirements, project tracking, documentation, manually updated dashboard and dashboard.
We're not abusing Excel anymore, but we've ended up specialized software for everything. Ironically we've lost ability to create something that is exactly tailored for each person's need.
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#27I wish our company had this 10 years ago. Everybody was using and mis-using Excel for everything, whether it's requirements, project tracking, documentation, manually updated dashboard and dashboard. We're not abusing Excel anymore, but we've ended up specialized software for everything. Ironically we've lost ability to create something that is exactly tailored for each person's need.
Excel is SUCH a double-edged sword, isn't it?
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
all the alternatives are fairly mediocre, I tried them all. The closest thing is google spreadsheets, which really is not designed for RDBMS / light database work. You can read my review on alternativeto.net as well. https://alternativeto.net/software/airtable/reviews/
I see above you mention moving a lot of your business processes to it from Excel and Access. What would you do if Airtable was acquired and sunset? I'm in risk management, so a lot of my day to day is planning for the unexpected, hence my concern and interest in alternatives (perhaps an open source front end paired with OpenFaaS on the backend for integrations).
That's a risk I'm willing to take.
Airtable doesn't have an official, automated local backup system yet. Their forum post indicates it as well https://community.airtable.com/t/offline-local-backup/754/77.
Ideally, airtable should download a copy of all my database files into dropbox at least once/day, but that feature doesn't exist.
It should also have a automatic file downloader backup (e.g. when you upload an image, it goes to their amazonS3 server → that should ideally be backed up locally as well). Doesn't exist either. Just have to use the plugin I wrote for the time being
There is a 3rd party solution for backing up airtables using its API. Its on this forum post. https://community.airtable.com/t/zenbackups-airtable-databas.... Personally, I have not used it.
Another thing from a risk management standpoint. Airtable has only 1 API key, and that key has access to EVERYTHING. If someone knows both your API key + your airtable's base ID, they can do anything with it. Issue GET requests for data, PATCH and update values in your database, etc.
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#29Does anyone know how this compares to Coda[0]? I saw a post a while back about Coda and signed up to get an invite but haven't heard anything since. [0] https://coda.io/welcome
I know a bit about that, as I tried both. Spoiler: We kept using Airtable and Dropbox Paper instead.
Pros Coda: - As implied above: it is quite good at merging the features of a "word processor" (more like Google Drive, Dropbox Paper) with Airtable like functionality (Spreadsheets that are very easy to use, filter, display differently... I.e. building small pseudo apps. Basically: you can add text above and below your "Airtable" - Multiple documents inside a document (navigation on the left side). Pretty good for Wiki like things
Pros Airtable: - Better in displaying data (colors etc), adding attachements, e and other visual benefits that make it accessible to non nerds. - I know the pricing model. Coda doesn't tell (me) what they will charge. I simply didn't want to become dependent on something I don't know I can afford (many users)
Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding
#30I like airtable, but the per-base row limits (50,000 before you reach "contact us for pricing") are too small for many of the things I'd like to use it for. And there's something a bit odd in their pricing model, isn't there? The plus tier is $10 per user per month with a limit of 5,000 records per base; the pro tier is $20 per user per month, with a limit of 50,000 records per base. Suppose I want to use it to repla…
I was wondering about this too but I _assumed_ the users compounded the limit versus divide it. Does anyone know for sure how the limits work with multiple users?