Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Liu: Building vertical edges on horizontal software enables repeatable enterprise sales

Howie Liu · Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu · Dec 20, 2022 · at 14:09

Airtable CEO Howie Liu explains why horizontal platforms should package dedicated vertical solutions for specific customer use cases to focus go-to-market efforts.

0:00 / 0:24exact quote · 24.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 again and again and make sure that our product is actually delivering on those needs. It's just a much easier way to execute than trying to be all things to all people.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Howie Liu

Disclosure
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.”
Howie Liu Dec 20, 2022 ▶ 8:28 Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu
Insight
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 Dec 20, 2022 ▶ 23:29 Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu
Insight
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 Jan 6, 2021 ▶ 13:46 Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable | SaaStr Software Community
Opinion
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…”
Howie Liu Jan 6, 2021 ▶ 18:21 Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable | SaaStr Software Community
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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…”
Howie Liu Dec 10, 2020 ▶ 18:20 Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable's CEO Howie Liu
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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”
Howie Liu Dec 20, 2022 ▶ 22:15 Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 400 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.