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Airtable gets $52M in funding

businessinsider.com

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Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#51

Post by thinkloop »

simonswords82 wrote: post #34

I don't know man, I might not be the target audience (MD of a software company) but I just don't get this. It seems only slightly more useful than say a Google spreadsheet on a platform that yes might have blocks and templates but I didn't see anything there that made me want to switch away from Google Spreadsheets, Trello and a couple of other systems I use to run my 20 person £1mm turnover business. I'll keep it in…

I think being a competitor to Sheets is the business - there's space for 2 online spreadsheet solutions (Excel online is is a step below).

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#52

Post by skellera »

dyarosla wrote: post #18
sirmike_ wrote: post #17

Airtable 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

The article literally says that's not the case. They hope to get an IPO. I know doesn't mean it's 100% true but it's still right there.

"Airtable isn't yet profitable, Liu said, but can be "cash flow positive at a moments notice." And an IPO is the eventual goal, he says, because he doesn't want to sell his company again. "

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#54

Post by callesgg »

Airtable seams cool but i have a hard time understanding where in the market they are.

Like between Excel and a relational db app? Not sure about that.

Some things that often fail in excel is:

* You cant easily verify what the user writes.

* It is hard to stop users from destroying the formulas that make it work.

* It becomes slow when the row count starts to go up.

* You cant have user roles where some users is suppose to be able to see one thing and edit another and another user is to edit another thing and see something else.

* Data relationships are also mostly not there.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#55

Post by ProAm »

abhiyerra wrote: post #36

During the Sonoma County fires we had over 60 volunteeers editing Airtable verifying shelter information, fire locations, developments, lost and found and more. We essentially put a light Rails app in front of it to serve as a front end for the site sonomafireinfo.com. I don’t think we could have scaled and gotten volunteers onboard as quickly as we did without Airtable.

You couldnt get an app to scale to 60 people without this? Something seems off, 60 people is not a lot.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#56

Post by apetresc »

skellera wrote: post #52
dyarosla wrote: post #18

Earlier 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

The article literally says that's not the case. They hope to get an IPO. I know doesn't mean it's 100% true but it's still right there. "Airtable isn't yet profitable, Liu said, but can be "cash flow positive at a moments notice." And an IPO is the eventual goal, he says, because he doesn't want to sell his company again. "

To be fair, lots of founders say this to press, and tell a completely different story to investors. I don't know anything about Howie Liu but in general there's roughly zero correlation between what a founder tells reporters about acquisition plans and reality.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#57

Post by folz »

ProAm wrote: post #55
abhiyerra wrote: post #36

During the Sonoma County fires we had over 60 volunteeers editing Airtable verifying shelter information, fire locations, developments, lost and found and more. We essentially put a light Rails app in front of it to serve as a front end for the site sonomafireinfo.com. I don’t think we could have scaled and gotten volunteers onboard as quickly as we did without Airtable.

You couldnt get an app to scale to 60 people without this? Something seems off, 60 people is not a lot.

s/people/concurrent realtime volunteer editors collaborating to maintain and share accurate, relevant information for folks in a time of crisis/g

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#59

Post by orliesaurus »

It's pretty, it works, it's pricey..i like some of the marketing around it and the buzz features they have. Honestly I found that like a Google spreadsheet with the Blockspring addon works best for most of my scenarios..

P.s. Along the funding they announced a new feature, and the blog post that goes with it has an embedded map that breaks responsiveness on mobile...did no one really double check before announcing a major feature release?

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#60

Post by ikeboy »

mjw1007 wrote: post #20

I 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…

Yup I considered migrating from google sheets but limits seemed too low for what I wanted. Sheets isn’t great, I split to multiple spreadsheets when I hit the limit but it works for me
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