Liu: Airtable's initial prototype completely faked its database back end
Howie Liu · Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu · Dec 20, 2022 · at 3:13
Airtable co-founder and CEO Howie Liu explains how the company approached initial product de-risking in a fireside chat with Coatue's Caryn Marooney.
0:00 / 0:31exact quote · 32.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 there was a lot of technical complexity there we knew we would have to go and build this real time relational database engine. The first starting point was just if we can't distill the, these UX concepts into something that's really intuitive that anyone can pick up and just start building with, then it's kind of dead on arrival.”
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
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…”