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Airtable acquires Airplane

airplane.dev

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Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#141

Post by jimmyechan »

Airplane customers: Our engineering team is in the position to help you migrate your Airplane UIs/Tasks to an alternative platform, even if it’s not to Dropbase.

Cofounder of Dropbase here. We build similar tools to Airplane.

I’m surprised to hear the news. I’ve always been impressed with the product/team and we share the same vision for a more developer-centric product.

We imagine it must be a bummer to have to migrate so suddenly. We want to help in a way that’s actually meaningful.

Reach out to airplane@dropbase.io

Additional info:

- Our latest Show HN for context on the product: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38534920

- Our tech stack: Python, Typescript/Javascript, React, AWS, FastAPI, Postgres, Pandas

- Other tools: Stripe, HubSpot, Slack, Snowflake, OpenAPI. We have experience with other app builders and we pick things up fast

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#142

Post by sachinr »

This feels like really bittersweet news - congrats to the Airplane team on the acquisition but it’s sad to see a great tool disappear.

When we started Zipper.dev, we were really inspired by Airplane’s vision of making it possible to build useful software without a bunch of boilerplate and custom set up. We’re still optimistic that there’s going to be more innovation in this space.

If you’re an Airplane user or someone who’s interested in the idea of making web apps and integrations between tools really simple to build, please hit us up - we’d love to chat (hello@zipper.dev / @zipperdev). Here’s a bit more about what we’re doing at zipper.dev:

* We allow you to write and run Typescript functions without leaving your browser

* There’s a built-in frontend framework so all you need to do is output JSON and you’ll have an interactive UI

* Every Zipper app has a key-value store, a scheduler, secrets, and more

* Connectors for most databases (Postgres, MySQL, and Mongo) and other SaaS tools like Slack, Discord, Notion, GitHub, OpenAI, and more

* Import from NPM, esm.sh, deno.land and even other Zipper apps

We’re in a free open beta and looking for feedback, all you need is a GitHub account to sign up.

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#143

Post by acjohnson55 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #112
satvikpendem wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is fine to market on HN, as we have Show HN already, but in this case, it is still acceptable as they are offering a specific solution to the problem defined in the post, namely that Airplane customers must move off a shutdown product.

Show HN is different. Why don't I see other marketing like the GGP?

In my experience, it's quite common, and it's accepted as long as people do it respectfully. Sometimes, there's pushback, especially if someone seems like they're denigrating other options.

In this case, it feels particularly appropriate. I'm an Airplane user, and I came to this article specifically hoping to see what options there are to migrate to.

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#145

Post by kevinkatzke »

ctb9 wrote: post #2

Welp, this changes my 2024 outlook. I've been using Airplane.dev since their first post on HN, and I was repeatedly delighted with the way the product "just worked", I thought they made great choices about code vs. config vs. admin, and their feature development velocity was superb. I was ready to really jump in and move beyond simple internal tools to build complex, mission critical internal systems in airplane. Doe…

Take a look at Superblocks: https://www.superblocks.com/

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#146

Post by wolverine876 »

temp_praneshp wrote: post #140
wolverine876 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you reposting a comment that the author deleted?

Parent made a wildly inaccurate statement, and had a (quickly deleted) snarky follow-up to jeremyjh's reply. If I come back to this thread in a year, I don't want to be confused. It seems like you flagged my comment because you didn't like it, consider it similar behavior.

fyi: Flagging is for comments that violate the HN guidelines, downvotes are for comments you "didn't like".

> If I come back to this thread in a year, I don't want to be confused.

Unless it's someone in power trying to cover something up, I think we should respect someone's decision to delete their comment. Just delete your own if it's now out of context.

Do you check back in a year?

> a (quickly deleted) snarky follow-up to jeremyjh's reply.

Good for them for quickly deleting it.

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#147

Post by jhatemyjob »

wolverine876 wrote: post #146
temp_praneshp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent made a wildly inaccurate statement, and had a (quickly deleted) snarky follow-up to jeremyjh's reply. If I come back to this thread in a year, I don't want to be confused. It seems like you flagged my comment because you didn't like it, consider it similar behavior.

fyi: Flagging is for comments that violate the HN guidelines, downvotes are for comments you "didn't like". > If I come back to this thread in a year, I don't want to be confused. Unless it's someone in power trying to cover something up, I think we should respect someone's decision to delete their comment. Just delete your own if it's now out of context. Do you check back in a year? > a (quickly deleted) snarky foll…

> Good for them for quickly deleting it.

Thanks. I posted that comment and then I was like... they can believe whatever they want. I don't want to waste my time arguing with random people online

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#148

Post by acjohnson55 »

senderista wrote: post #64
hipadev23 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't integrate early-stage SaaS as critical to your business is the main lesson here. You get laid-off just like their employees when they rush toward a shitty acquisition.

I don't understand how any tech startup gets any adoption from business users with critical use cases. The risk seems obviously disqualifying.

One typical strategy is by having all core functionality open source, so that people can self-host, if necessary.

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#149

Post by acjohnson55 »

ttymck wrote: post #115

All the comments here seem to be interpreting "sunsetting the platform" to mean existing users will have no access to airplane features. Couldn't it just mean "airplane will be part of the Airtable platform moving forward"?

Unfortunately, they have confirmed that their service is shutting completely down in March.

Re: Airtable acquires Airplane

#150

Post by acjohnson55 »

I'm really bummed about this. Airplane is one of the dev tooling products I've been most excited about this past year. For those who aren't familiar, I'd say it's like a much fresher version of Jenkins, if you have ever used Jenkins as a runner of operational tasks beyond CI/CD.

And to see it shutdown with such short notice and no blessed migration path or ability to self-host is honestly a bit shocking. As a customer, it would have been nice to have seen this acknowledged with some empathy for the position it puts us in, or some explanation of why it wasn't feasible.

I'm also a little perplexed that Airtable thought highly enough of them to do the acquihire but didn't see value in keeping the product available. A company with Airtable's reach and SaaS sales experience may well have been able to get a lot more customers on the platform.

It's hard to be too mad, because I did enjoy using it and interfacing with their engineers.

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