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Airtable gets $52M in funding

businessinsider.com

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Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#171

Post by nojvek »

jhinds wrote: post #167

I was actually looking for something like this, good to know a product like this exists. I use a combination of Trello and Google Drive for most things, everything from my personal life, to hobbies, to side projects, and work items. I love Trello but sometimes I want something a little bit more. I think I'll to duplicate things I'm working on for a few weeks or so in here to see how I like it. Maybe I'll replace Trel…

Have you used fieldbook. It’s pretty amazing too. Like spreadsheets, but more involved.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#172

Post by nojvek »

titus22 wrote: post #131
sheetjs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spolsky's discussion of Excel is probably the best way to understand Airtable: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff... > Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. > What was I talking about? Oh yeah…

If that's the target audience, then I see Airtable failing also. Surely 80% of the benefit of an excel spreadsheet, or google sheets, for a common user is how bare bones and simple to navigate the two products are? "Oh hey, I just need to fire off some data rapidly in an organized way. Boop, done." And that's the trick, isn't it? The need to rapidly organize previously un-organized data. It's not a case of, "I know e…

52M isn’t chump change in funding. Glad to know VC’s think it’s a big problem.

Personally I am working on an Airtable/excel like product but rather than a spreadsheet, you can easily make structured hierarchies. Think rows, which could have more rows, or link to other cells. A very easy way to capture relational data.

You can just start writing stuff in cells Define headings and data types later. Like git, it stores version history, let’s you work offline and let’s you sync with others. Let’s you upload markdown, or pictures and files into cells. Define a stricter schemas later. Restrict editing/viewing of cells based on formulas so others can’t easily break what you’ve created.

I wrote a little manifesto at orows.com and working on a prototype. Once I have about a 100 users, I plan to quit my job and work on it full time.

Think github, but rather than files, an object graph.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#173

Post by GFischer »

feiofh398r39rty wrote: post #132
GFischer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And FoxPro was great, so if Airtable is Web 2.0 FoxPro they might be onto something :)

Yes, this is actually pretty surprising in the hindsight is 20/20 way. I disagree that FoxPro was great, it had too many bugs and issues for that, but the 'concept of FoxPro' was indeed great.

You're right - FoxPro was a great concept, maybe not that much in execution.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#174

Post by nojvek »

porker wrote: post #71
fiatjaf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you use a spreadsheet for that? I'm asking sincerely, since most of open examples I see of people using Airtable and Fieldbook and other similar software is for these simple use cases -- in fact for tracking wines or whatever, a spreadsheet is maybe much better. Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly…

> Now when I tried to use Fieldbook for a somewhat complex bunch of data that gets currently added, 5 tables with references between them it has quickly bloated and become slow to the point of not being usable anymore. I've had the same experience, glad it's not just me. It was a few months ago so I don't remember the exact details, but I could not model the complex relationships I wanted in Fieldbook (which I've use…

Care to elaborate what kind of complex data modelling you wanted to do?

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#175

Post by nkristoffersen »

mjw1007 wrote: post #152
chenster wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a provisioning problem. Let's assuming that the new pricing model is based on usage per user, like 50,000 records per user, and how are you suppose to track each individual record, even that is possible, it would not be very practical as the every CRUD operations would require a record count referenced to the user. Keep X records per Base makes the operation a lot easier and technically much more feasible.

I wouldn't suggest anything so complicated. Rather (if it isn't a technical limitation), I'd suggest they increase the per-base limit for customers who pay for more users, or else add a third paid tier above 'pro'.

They do have a 3rd tier. “Contact us” is probably the tier you want.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#176

Post by MattRix »

benatkin wrote: post #119

This is pretty similar to DabbleDB. I wonder why this was so much more successful than DabbleDB. https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online-app-buildi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY

Because DabbleDB was ugly and not very user friendly?

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#177

Post by heedlessly2 »

siddharthdeswal wrote: post #141
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.

Why are people downvoting your question? Seems like a legit thing to ask. I suspect HN behaves a little like how many folks treat their national army... you can't ask a question that may imply a bad decision during an important human/national event. ÷ "Why wasn't your system able to scale to 60 users during natural calamity?" ~ "How dare you question such a noble cause? Have you ever even worked with govt?" (Downvote…

because the answer is obvious, and someone already replied with it

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#178

Post by jpster »

yoshyosh wrote: post #109
jpster wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mar…

This sounds like a very interesting idea as a cohesive product. A normal user wouldn't be able to set this up themselves.

Could be. I haven’t researched it but my impression is that off the shelf ATS is quite expensive.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#180

Post by benatkin »

MattRix wrote: post #176
benatkin wrote: post #119

This is pretty similar to DabbleDB. I wonder why this was so much more successful than DabbleDB. https://techcrunch.com/2006/03/11/dabbledb-online-app-buildi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wZmYMWKLkY

Because DabbleDB was ugly and not very user friendly?

Yeah that sounds about right.
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