Howie Liu
Co-Founder & CEO, Airtable · 3 appearances on the record.
computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →
founderexecutiveinvestor@howietl ↗LinkedIn ↗airtable.com ↗
Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, a cloud-based low-code database and collaboration platform. Prior to Airtable, he co-founded the CRM startup Etacts, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2010.
40statements → 16claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.75/5average certainty → 1.88/5average debate potential →
2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 13 not checkable as stated how the 16 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
1 prediction · 15 assertions · 2 opinions · 14 insights · 5 disclosures · 3 what ifs · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 16 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 13 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Howie argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Expressed certainty vs assessment result
weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet
Everything Howie Liu said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Liu: Airtable targets Salesforce App Cloud and ServiceNow for enterprise apps
“We want to position ourselves against the Salesforce app clouds and ServiceNow deployments out there. So really robust applications within large enterprises that now, you know, can be built in a much more agile and connected way with Airtable.”
Liu: Retrofitting PLG onto enterprise sales is harder than adding sales to PLG
“It's probably harder to retrofit, you know, delightful, you know, bottoms up adoptable or PLG you know, adoptable product. You know, after the fact than it is to figure out how to start with self-serve adoption, PLG, and then layer in enterprise sales.”
Howie Liu: A bottoms-up model alone cannot sustain growth to $1B revenue
“Bottoms up is great... But at the same time it's, you know, it's probably not enough in most cases to provide durable growth. For the next 10 years, right? If your aspirations are to become a billion dollar plus revenue business, like it's very unlikely”
Howie Liu: Big Tech giants are directly attempting to replicate Airtable
“Microsoft has a product called list that is in many ways, like a direct, you know, kind of attempt to replicate air table. We think we have a lot of product advantages over that product, but, you know, it's a much more direct play against air table. Google has…”
Liu: Microsoft Lists is a direct attempt to replicate Airtable
“Microsoft has a product called list that is. In many ways, like a direct, you know, kind of attempt to replicate air table. We think we have a lot of product advantages over that product, but you know, it's a much more direct play against air table. Google has…”
Liu: Building vertical edges on horizontal software enables repeatable enterprise sales
“Creating vertical edges on top of a horizontal platform has given us this much sharper focus. And we, you know, we've seen the results you know, speak for themselves, like being able to much more easily sell into the same use case, same buyer type again and ag…”
Liu: Classic top-down enterprise sales will become increasingly outdated
“I think that model is going to become increasingly, you know maybe not obsolete, but just It's gonna be increasingly outdated relative to this new you know, product-led approach”
Liu: Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel break down earlier than Airtable
“Sheets and Excel break down much, much earlier than Airtable does because we actually have, you know, kind of the app platform foundations. We have a relational database. You can scale up you know, a more complex workflow”
Howie Liu: Horizontal platforms create durable long-term advantages and eliminate market-size risk
“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 longterm you have more durable advantages. I thi…”
Howie Liu: Early investors warned Airtable's business plan was fatally flawed
“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... And yet we think your entire bus…”
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…”
Liu: Pure bottom-up growth cannot scale SaaS companies to $1B revenue
“It's, you know, it's probably not enough in most cases to provide durable growth. For the next 10 years, right? If your aspirations are to become a billion dollar plus revenue business, like it's very unlikely, even Atlassian has layered in like real sales at …”
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…”
Liu: Launching Airtable directly against ServiceNow would have failed
“Had we launched out of the gates talking about, you know, taking on, let's say service now, it would have been a little bit ludicrous, right? Like it would have, you know just con completely I think over our customers or reporters or, you know, investors heads…”
Howie Liu: Category definition requires clearly contrasting against existing 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 us…”
Howie Liu: Pitching low-code as 'software creation' fails for average users
“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…”
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…”
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.”
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…”
Liu: Marketing teams offer a strategic wedge for enterprise expansion
“We can land, you know, every marketing team in the world. That's a much bigger vertical and also a strategically advantaged place to then expand to other parts of the enterprise.”
Liu: Airtable gets thousands of organic, self-serve signups per day
“You know, we get thousands of many thousands of organic signups per day and some percent of those convert through the funnel into active users. And then some of those people just pull out a credit card without literally ever talking to a person at our table, r…”
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…”
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Ho | Dec 20, 2022 | 23m |
| Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable | SaaStr Software Community | Jan 6, 2021 | 23m |
| Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable's CEO Howie Liu | Dec 10, 2020 | 37m |