The Ledger
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Howie Liu: No-code remains necessary because non-technical users can inspect AI output
“The fact that no code by definition means that the output of the Turing bot, the AI builder, Is actually in a form that a non-technical user can understand. So the very person who's asking the AI to generate the app can then understand fully its outputs.”
Howie Liu: Every PLG company eventually hits a growth asymptote
“You know, which is not to say you have to be PLG to start with, but I think every PLG company, and this is true, whether you started in Zerp or after I don't think it's going away, but I think if you start with PLG, you will eventually run into an asymptote of…”
Liu: Pegasystems addresses complex processes in a brittle, heavyweight manner
“Think like old school companies like Pegasystems, right. That are really tackling very complex business processes. But in a very brittle way, right? Like once you implement something on Pega, you're not iterating on that, like on a daily or even monthly or eve…”
Howie Liu: Airtable has grown revenue every single month since launch
“We've been growing revenue every single month, like of our existence”
Liu: Airtable forecasts top-decile revenue growth over the next 12 months
“We also are forecasting a next 12 month revenue growth rate of also top decile growth.”
Howie Liu: Training an in-house foundation model is not viable for Airtable
“I think it's very difficult to create anything relevant if we were to train our own foundation model.”
Liu: Airtable built the first real-time synchronized relational database engine
“In Airtable, we spent a lot of time up front investing in the first real-time synchronized relational database engine out there.”
Liu: Long-tail verticals are too small for dedicated software companies
“So there are many different long tail categories that we believe are too small of a market for any, you know, single dedicated company to really build a great vertical product around.”
Howie Liu: Airtable has nearly $1B on balance sheet and is profitable
“We have, you know, still a billion of capital nearly in, in the balance sheet and like, you know, we're now profitable.”
Liu: 50% of Fortune 500 companies are paid Airtable customers
“50% of the Fortune 500 are paid customers.”
Howie Liu: Founders should only seek advice for their immediate next phase
“What I wish I knew at the time of each of these phases is to take advice from people who are as close to the next phase, the next immediate phase of the company and the problems that we need to solve as possible versus taking advice from people who are too far…”
Howie Liu: Enterprise expansion drove as much PLG as SMBs for Airtable
“We got more virality driven by expansion within enterprises, real large companies. Right. And you know, seeing like that initial user go to five to 10 to 50 to hundreds to thousands that actually drove a lot of our PLG. So PLG actually for us happened as much …”
Airtable achieved positive cash flow in Q4 2023 and Q1 2024
“And as of Q four of this past year, and now we just completed Q one, we are cashflow positive as a business.”
Liu: Airtable has hundreds of millions in revenue and top-decile SaaS growth
“We're in the hundreds of millions of revenue, and we would have ended last year as a top decile grower amongst public SaaS companies.”
Liu: Every custom application built on Airtable generates its own API
“It's as if every application that you built in Airtable, whether it's used to track job applicants or a web wedding planning event it's as if each of those apps comes with its own API.”