Howie Liu
14 statements across 3 episodes · 7 bullish · 1 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Dec 10, 2020 by Howie Liu · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Howie Liu's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Howie Liu, oldest first
Dec 10, 2020
Liu: Pitching 'software creation' fails because it is not a burning need
“The software creation pitch that I described earlier was faulty because I think it's not obvious to the average customer or to most customers. Why do I need to create software in the first place? Right. It's not a need that's burning in their minds... Just say…”
Dec 10, 2020 neutral
Liu: Airtable does not pitch CIOs top-down without organic adoption
“So we're still not doing like true top-down sales where we're going in upfront. And without any organic adoption in an account saying to a CIO or to you know, an exec buyer, Hey, wouldn't you like to buy 20,000 seats of air table all at once, right? Without tr…”
Dec 10, 2020
Liu: True category definition requires explicitly naming competitor alternatives
“Real category definition means that you've been very explicit about what are your alternatives? You know, the reality is like not everybody in the world Has heard of Airtable, or even the ones who have heard of Airtable aren't using it. And so if they're not u…”
Dec 10, 2020 positive
Liu: Multiple enterprise teams spent tens of thousands in ARR on credit cards
“And sometimes we'd have even within one account, multiple teams, each pulling out their credit cards and paying for air table, sometimes substantial amounts for air table, tens of thousands of ARR per team and multiple teams across the account. To the point wh…”
Dec 10, 2020 positive
Dec 10, 2020 positive
Liu: Airtable spent 2.5 years building its platform instead of pivoting
“We resisted the temptation to do something quicker and easier and maybe just switch it to being like a project management tool, right? Early on that could have been like a six month effort instead of like a two and a half year effort to build before launch.”
Dec 10, 2020 positive
Liu: Airtable has multi-million-dollar ARR accounts with thousands of seats
“Like we have multimillion dollar ARR accounts. With thousands of paid seats which obviously only happens in very large enterprises, but we also have like literally five person SMBs that are only five people to begin with their entire company and they're using …”
Dec 10, 2020 bullish
Dec 10, 2020 bullish
Liu: Horizontal platforms create more durable long-term advantages
“If you're really good at holding this pace and just having this deliberate focus on being a horizontal platform and trying to serve this massively diverse, you know, total addressable market, then I think in the long term, you have more durable advantages. I t…”
Dec 10, 2020 bullish
Liu: Airtable saw an opportunity to low-end disrupt enterprise low-code
“There's clearly this growing need, this kind of growing market for low code, but also There's this opportunity to almost low end disrupt it and make it something that it doesn't have to deploy, but a business end user can just go and figure out if it could jus…”
Dec 10, 2020 negative
Liu: Investors rejected Airtable's early rounds for lacking a vertical focus
“When we went out and raised our first few rounds of funding a ton of the investors out there, you know, they would basically give us a feedback of, Hey, we think you're really, you know, you've built this really cool product. It's clearly, you know, required a…”
Jan 6, 2021
Howie Liu: Founders Overestimate Competition Short-Term but Underestimate It Long-Term
“We tend to overestimate competition in the short term. We get really freaked out about it. But we underestimate in the longterm. So, you know, like calm yourself down in the short term, but then like be more paranoid in the longterm about what this really mean…”
Jan 6, 2021
Howie Liu: Airtable might have sold early under different investors
“I mean, I think with a different set of investors, we may not have made it right to where we are today. I think we might've gotten pressured to either sell out early or go down a more narrow path, compete more directly with project management tools.”
Dec 20, 2022
Liu: Airtable's initial prototype completely faked its database back end
“And so the first version of our product actually, you know, was a prototype purely UX you know, focus. So we created a front end and you know, I think initially wireframes and then an interactive prototype. And completely fake the back end because even though …”