Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Airtable gets $52M in funding

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 199 posts

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#61

Post by dyarosla »

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. "

Thanks for pointing that out- I did initially miss that point. Let's see if Liu sticks to that plan.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#62

Post by viraptor »

I'm really happy about airtable. My use case is basically "shared access/excel-like with easier row grouping and simple projections". I used the API as well.

The feature I miss most is charts/graphs. Really hope they'll add them one day.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#63

Post by kornish »

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.

I think the better question is: during a life-and-death fire rescue effort, is it a better use of time to use Airtable as a backend or to write, deploy, and operate a concurrent editing backend yourself? There's a clear answer here.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#64

Post by jpster »

vongomben wrote: post #4
krisroadruck wrote: post #2

Happy to see these guys doing well. Got turned onto their product middle of last year and have started using it for all sorts of stuff. Its a great middle ground between an excel file and building a custom app for things. Super flexible with very little learning curve. Girlfriend and I even use it to track which wines we've tried, like, and ratings and stuff for them.

I discovered airtable not long ago, and planned to give it a try soon. What frightened me was exactly that middle ground though, my processes are too tied to the mail think products like streak meet it better. I will definetly test it

I've had success using Airtable with an email flow for an applicant tracking system. I:

-posted a job ad with a specific reply-to email address

-every time an applicant wrote to that email address, a row would automatically be added in an Airtable base

-I would review their application and if I wanted to pass them on to a next step, I would select a pre-defined drop-down value in their row in the Airtable base to mark them as something like "Go" or "No go".

-This would trigger Zapier to send an email to the applicant with instructions on how to take our screening questionnaire in SurveyGizmo

-Depending on the results of the questionnaire, I would select another drop-down value, triggering another email, etc.

It wasn't perfect but it did help me to automate what had been a very painful process.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#65

Post by wanderer2323 »

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 wouldn't compare Airtable to Google Spreadsheets or Excel for that matter. It looks more like a non-buggy Web 2.0 FoxPro, an RDBMS with a user-friendly UX.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#66

Post by 1123581321 »

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…

I think they realize that most orgs that are creating a lot of records will share credentials to reduce cost, so they need multiple tier limits to upsell. I’m okay with this because we share an Airtable login. :)

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#67

Post by toomuchtodo »

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.

Is your rails middleware open source? It might help other disaster/emergency response efforts in the future.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#68

Post by inopinatus »

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…

Wearing my SaaS product manager hat I’d say shoot them an email describing your expectations and suggesting your price point. I’ve rejigged product packaging myself in response to high quality/specific presales feedback and reached additional market segments as a result.

And conversely, I have an unmarketed plan with despite being a tiny customer with no leverage - the point being that the packages marketed aren’t always the complete range available. But you have to ask.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#69

Post by ProAm »

kornish wrote: post #63
ProAm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the better question is: during a life-and-death fire rescue effort, is it a better use of time to use Airtable as a backend or to write, deploy, and operate a concurrent editing backend yourself? There's a clear answer here.

Good point but most states have disaster relief infrastructure already in place for events like this? If this was scrounged up the day of it would make sense.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#70

Post by brandonmenc »

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…

We use it at work for project management.

It's an app that sits somewhere between a database and a spreadsheet, bringing the best features of both, that is easily "programmed" by non-programmers, and with a nice looking interface to boot.

Post reply on HN