The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 40 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
Liu: Airtable holds hundreds of millions in cash reserves
“We have a few hundred million in the bank of cash that we can deploy towards, you know, hiring or marketing or whatever we want to do.”
Liu: Airtable might have sold early under different investors
“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: 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…”
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…”
Liu: Non-platform SaaS often scales near-term revenue faster than platforms
“Vertical SaaS businesses or just, you know, kind of non-platform SaaS businesses can maybe even like do a better job of scaling near-term revenue. Cause there's a clearer sales motion, clear use case that you're nailing.”
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 …”
Liu: Airtable raised a $3M seed round at a $6M pre-money valuation
“We ended up raising, I think, a three million dollar round, which seemed like a lot of money at the time at a six million pre”
Howie Liu: Airtable saw hundreds of year-one signups from Nike, Condé Nast
“You know, we had hundreds of signups from, you know, big companies like Condi Nassar, Nike within the first few months or certainly the first year of you know, kind of launching as a product.”
Howie Liu: Airtable receives thousands of organic signups per day
“We get thousands of many thousands of organic signups per day and some percent of those convert through the funnel into active users.”
Howie Liu: Tens of thousands of companies have 5+ seat Airtable workspaces
“We have like literally, you know, tens of thousands of companies out there who already have a, you know, five or greater seat workspace that's active on Airtable.”
Howie Liu: Airtable has a few hundred million dollars in cash
“We have a few hundred million in the bank of cash that we can deploy towards, you know, hiring or marketing or whatever we want to do.”
Liu: Airtable had hundreds of signups from major enterprises within year one
“You know, we had hundreds of signups from, you know, big companies like Hondi, Nassar, Nike within the first few months or certainly the first year of you know, kind of launching as a product.”
Liu: Airtable did almost no outbound sales or marketing before 2020
“I mean, we really didn't do much in the way of outbound sales and marketing you know, before this year, even now it's still kind of early days, experimental efforts.”
Howie Liu: Airtable has tens of thousands of active five-plus-seat workspaces
“For us, for instance, we have like literally, you know, tens of thousands of companies out there who already have a, you know, five or greater seat workspace that's active on air table.”
Liu: Airtable built a custom real-time relational database engine for collaboration
“We actually ended up building our own real time relational database engine in order to support the type of collaboration experience we wanted on top of it.”
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…”
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 …”
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.”