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Expect entshittification of Airtable after the acquisition.
This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software is pretty much almost a standard. Software and businesses that goes through these stages: Venture Capital, Private Equity, Acquisitions, Ads / Sponsors, Raising Prices due to competition, etc. Always get enshittified.
Bending Spoons is where products go to die.
I had some thoughts but for context. Basically, widely reported Airtable's 2026 reported ARR was close to $500M. they sold at a ~3x multiple assuming it went flat/down~~. They had raised $1.4B (total latest around 770M) in funding I am not sure for what?? and had ~1B in cash (according to some online sources)?? Now I have no idea what this is even about, maybe all investors wanted out?
Assuming M&A deals take at least a few months to close, this acquisition was probably set in motion around April, when SaaS sentiment was near rock bottom and cash-flow machines like Cloudflare, Adobe, and Snowflake were getting crushed simply because Anthropic announced something.
I had some thoughts but for context. Basically, widely reported Airtable's 2026 reported ARR was close to $500M. they sold at a ~3x multiple assuming it went flat/down~~. They had raised $1.4B (total latest around 770M) in funding I am not sure for what?? and had ~1B in cash (according to some online sources)?? Now I have no idea what this is even about, maybe all investors wanted out?
$270M@5.8B Series E 2021 Mar
$185M@2.6B Series D 2020 Sep
$100M@1.1B Series C 2018 Nov
$52M@152M Series B 2018 Mar
Bending Spoons must have amazing negotiaters to strike such a bargain.
We should send them to Iran to negotiate the peace deal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This goes for almost all software. 'entshittification' in software is pretty much almost a standard. Software and businesses that goes through these stages: Venture Capital, Private Equity, Acquisitions, Ads / Sponsors, Raising Prices due to competition, etc. Always get enshittified.
Enshitification is a problem when the power structures are not in the user's favour.
Getting users is hard, especially on the Internet where your audience is global, and competition is fierce. Word of mouth or user advocacy has always been the best cost-to-value marketing tool.
So starting out by offering things for free or at a loss has been the go-to strategy forever.
But (as we all know) that's not sustainable, so there's pretty much nowhere to go but down, from a value-to-user perspective.
Bending Spoons is where products go to die.