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Airtable gets $52M in funding

businessinsider.com

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Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#181

Post by graeme »

infinite8s wrote: post #127
graeme wrote: post #108

I’m having trouble understanding what I would use Airtable for. I run an online business and work with a few long term contractors. We mostly communicate in trello or slack. There isn’t really any inventory to mamage. I’m assuming there’s an airtable use for me. But I haven’t been able to figure it out from their marketing. Is there a use case in particular I should look at as a start? (Personal life management stuff…

Your profile says you are an LSAT tutor. How do you keep track of everyone you tutor, whether they've paid, etc?

Oh I should update that. I very rarely tutor now. Mostly my site is set up to sell courses.

When I do occasionally take a single student, I just put an entry on a pending money section of my finance tracking spreadsheet.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#182

Post by abhiyerra »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #67
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.

Yes, https://github.com/chimera/sonomafireinfo.org

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#183

Post by abhiyerra »

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.

We didn't want to write a lot of logic and UI when Airtable was a perfectly good DB/Admin backend. Our goal was rapid response. We built a site off the ground in an hour with useful information and onboarding someone with a tool like Airtable was much easier than custom interface.

People=Volunteers. We had over 130,000 unique visitors to the site relying on us for up to date accurate information.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#184

Post by abhiyerra »

ProAm wrote: post #98
sbierwagen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think local government has IT infrastructure just for disaster operations, or if it does, that you can add a user to it in less than two business weeks, then you haven't worked in local government.

I have worked in local government, and have dealt with these departments. While most cities probably dont have this infrastructure, most states do and open it to local muni's for these exact scenarios. Like I said if they had to create something last minute this is great, I was just surprised at their appreciation to scale something to 60 users.

I think scaling it to 60 concurrent users editing Airtable at the same time without a hitch and able to onboard someone to be useful within 10 mins of them coming in the door was what we liked.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#185

Post by uloweb »

Good product, but they are still making something very similar to spreadsheets, instead of creating something new.

IRL It looks, like they have created more powerful and effective internal combustion engine, but still not a Tesla, thereby keeping more market for old-looking software and leaving less place for something really new.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#186

Post by hungerstrike »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #49
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Bases are essentially full databases. You can have as many bases as you want. You can share your base (e.g. view only, not edit) to anybody [nonpaying users, nonlogged on users, etc] If your base has 5,001 records, only users with a $20/month plan can edit that base. Everyone in your company to my understanding has to have the same plan though. So, you can't have one staff member at a $10/month plan, and another at $…

Do you know if you need a separate login, say for the situation where you want to use the product at work and as a separate, single user?

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#187

Post by saralily »

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. "

Most companies could be cashflow positive by firing their employees or selling their technology.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#188

Post by JepZ »

digitalbase wrote: post #165
JepZ wrote: post #129

I just saw Airtable for the fist time and it looks awesome. Yet I am a little concerned about the vendor lock in. Does anybody know a self hosted alternative?

Why worried about vendor lock in? Every base comes with API and export options. It's very easy to take your data with you? Actually we mirror all the data every 24 hours with some simple GET requests in combination with postgres JSON columns

Well, getting the data out of it is just one part. I mean everything what makes Airtable better than excel, will be gone when they turn off their service.

That's a major issue if you want to use their service for anything that actually matters. You never know how fast a change is coming to such a platform and how much time you have to adapt.

For comparison: I am not a particular fan of MS Access, but I think the use-cases for Access and Airtable have much in common. With Access you have a certain vendor lock in too in terms of technology. So when Microsoft stops developing Access, you have to search for an alternative as you do not know if the runtime will be available on the next OS generation. Nevertheless, you can use the software as long as you have a machine which can run the current version (probably years).

In contrast, if Airtable gets shut down and will not be available in 3 month (e.g. if they get bought by someone who wants to integrate their tech into another product and shuts down the current service), you will have exactly 3 month to find/develop/deploy a replacement. Not cool.

Re: Airtable gets $52M in funding

#190

Post by chenster »

digitalbase wrote: post #79
viksit wrote: post #58

I for one hope Salesforce acquires Airtable and integrates them into Quip. That will be a kick-ass workflow and documentation system.

the price just went up (after their round) :-) I hope they don't sell and keep building the mission

How much was it before?
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