4 ms·

I don't know man, I might not be the target audience (MD of a software company) but I just don't get this. It seems only slightly more useful than say a Google

I don't know man, I might not be the target audience (MD of a software company) but I just don't get this. It seems only slightly more useful than say a Google spreadsheet on a platform that yes might have blocks and templates but I didn't see anything there that made me want to switch away from Google Spreadsheets, Trello and a couple of other systems I use to run my 20 person £1mm turnover business. I'll keep it in mind but having played with Airtable I just don't see the value. Still, wish them all the best.

sheetjs 9y ago
Spolsky's discussion of Excel is probably the best way to understand Airtable: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff... > Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. > What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations. If you view it from the lens that most Excel users employ the spreadsheet to create lists and tables (data organization), then Airtable is one way to improve that workflow.
- eterm 9y ago
  Yes, people use excel to create databases without having to fuss about data-types and referential integrity (and without knowing they would even have to fuss about them).
- kokey 9y ago
  Using Excel spreadsheets multi user database instead of as a spreadsheet calculator is one of my pet peeves. Unfortunately it's also exactly what happens when organisations are lacking in processes and tools and less technical people have to try to make their own. So, I welcome any app that actually give people the multi user database that they actually need instead of e-mailing excel files to each other and losing track of versions.
- pbreit 9y ago
  But then Google Sheets might be a better call.
- titus22 9y ago
  If that's the target audience, then I see Airtable failing also. Surely 80% of the benefit of an excel spreadsheet, or google sheets, for a common user is how bare bones and simple to navigate the two products are? "Oh hey, I just need to fire off some data rapidly in an organized way. Boop, done." And that's the trick, isn't it? The need to rapidly organize previously un-organized data. It's not a case of, "I know exactly how I want to rapidly organize some data." With Airtable, it would be "I now have to navigate this decoupled spread out GUI and learn what all these abstract terms mean, when all I want to do is calculate how much we spent on ice cream last month." In essence, it is making the workflow slower for those types of people. On the other end of the spectrum, from a programmer's point of view, GUI's ALWAYS slow things down. This is why programmers who used VIM / Emacs were faster than those using modern IDE's. It's why hot-keys are important to both technical and non-technical workers. Presentation does not equal productivity. The presentation is what Airtable is pushing as the abstraction for non-technical users. If the target audience for Airtable is instead small-business startups - then those startups are going to be in for a world of hurt when they need to get into real business development. They will have wasted time, energy, and resources to get set up on a lego platform that they'll need to migrate away from. Looking at the pricing model and data limitations, there's nothing that would make this a better choice than just hooking up to AWS or something similar, directly. Using Airtable would require maintaining some form of middleware for SPA's...and there's no way in the world that you wouldn't be hitting their caps rapidly. Just an extra cost. I'm not saying this product won't work well for a market niche, but that niche is a lot smaller than the buzz words thrown around in today's publications.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    52M isn’t chump change in funding. Glad to know VC’s think it’s a big problem. Personally I am working on an Airtable/excel like product but rather than a spreadsheet, you can easily make structured hierarchies. Think rows, which could have more rows, or link to other cells. A very easy way to capture relational data. You can just start writing stuff in cells Define headings and data types later. Like git, it stores version history, let’s you work offline and let’s you sync with others. Let’s you upload markdown, or pictures and files into cells. Define a stricter schemas later. Restrict editing/viewing of cells based on formulas so others can’t easily break what you’ve created. I wrote a little manifesto at orows.com and working on a prototype. Once I have about a 100 users, I plan to quit my job and work on it full time. Think github, but rather than files, an object graph.
mercer 9y ago
It's a lot more user-friendly than Google Sheets, what with the various input methods and the easy 'views' that hide/show/whatever the underlying raw information. Plus, it's really easy to link tables to each other. I might not have looked well enough, but I don't think GSheets can do that without some scripting involved.
thinkloop 9y ago
I think being a competitor to Sheets is the business - there's space for 2 online spreadsheet solutions (Excel online is is a step below).
wanderer2323 9y ago
I wouldn't compare Airtable to Google Spreadsheets or Excel for that matter. It looks more like a non-buggy Web 2.0 FoxPro, an RDBMS with a user-friendly UX.
- prepend 9y ago
  I wish it was a Web 2.0 FoxPro. It’s maybe the closest, but the price model is too much. You could buy foxpro for $1200 and create 100 databases with all sorts of janky workflows used within your small business. Paying $20/user/infinity for lower amounts of records doesn’t quite fit that niche. And so the hacked processes with Google Docs and now Excel365 continue. Hopefully with this new funding, Airtable can fix their pricing model and become successful as Access was.
  - mlloyd 9y ago
    What's the price sweet spot here assuming unlimited (or near unlimited) records allowed?
    - prepend 9y ago
      For me, it’s a one time fee that I can self host or run against AWS or something of my choosing. But I’m pretty weird. I suspect one that has really simple and easily measureable prices. Like $500/year for a terabyte of storage in as many bases as you want. This should let most small businesses not worry about cost. Kind of like how FoxPro let people build so many solutions. The model now is not very predictable so it’s hard for small businesses to use. I think 365 charges $100/user/year for 1TB. That’s for write/edit permissions. Maybe double that or something. So 5 users would give 5TB total for $1000/year. Raw storage may not be the right measure, but it is better than cells since it is easier to report on. Just constantly showing raw or logical space. Imagine if gmail charges by number of email messages in inbox and number of recipients rather than storage. That would be hard to predict.
- GFischer 9y ago
  And FoxPro was great, so if Airtable is Web 2.0 FoxPro they might be onto something :)
brandonmenc 9y ago
We use it at work for project management. It's an app that sits somewhere between a database and a spreadsheet, bringing the best features of both, that is easily "programmed" by non-programmers, and with a nice looking interface to boot.

sheetjs 9y ago

Spolsky's discussion of Excel is probably the best way to understand Airtable: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-different/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff... > Over the next two weeks we visited dozens of Excel customers, and did not see anyone using Excel to actually perform what you would call “calculations.” Almost all of them were using Excel because it was a convenient way to create a table. > What was I talking about? Oh yeah… most people just used Excel to make lists. Suddenly we understood why Lotus Improv, which was this fancy futuristic spreadsheet that was going to make Excel obsolete, had failed completely: because it was great at calculations, but terrible at creating tables, and everyone was using Excel for tables, not calculations. If you view it from the lens that most Excel users employ the spreadsheet to create lists and tables (data organization), then Airtable is one way to improve that workflow.

eterm 9y ago
Yes, people use excel to create databases without having to fuss about data-types and referential integrity (and without knowing they would even have to fuss about them).
kokey 9y ago
Using Excel spreadsheets multi user database instead of as a spreadsheet calculator is one of my pet peeves. Unfortunately it's also exactly what happens when organisations are lacking in processes and tools and less technical people have to try to make their own. So, I welcome any app that actually give people the multi user database that they actually need instead of e-mailing excel files to each other and losing track of versions.
pbreit 9y ago
But then Google Sheets might be a better call.
titus22 9y ago
If that's the target audience, then I see Airtable failing also. Surely 80% of the benefit of an excel spreadsheet, or google sheets, for a common user is how bare bones and simple to navigate the two products are? "Oh hey, I just need to fire off some data rapidly in an organized way. Boop, done." And that's the trick, isn't it? The need to rapidly organize previously un-organized data. It's not a case of, "I know exactly how I want to rapidly organize some data." With Airtable, it would be "I now have to navigate this decoupled spread out GUI and learn what all these abstract terms mean, when all I want to do is calculate how much we spent on ice cream last month." In essence, it is making the workflow slower for those types of people. On the other end of the spectrum, from a programmer's point of view, GUI's ALWAYS slow things down. This is why programmers who used VIM / Emacs were faster than those using modern IDE's. It's why hot-keys are important to both technical and non-technical workers. Presentation does not equal productivity. The presentation is what Airtable is pushing as the abstraction for non-technical users. If the target audience for Airtable is instead small-business startups - then those startups are going to be in for a world of hurt when they need to get into real business development. They will have wasted time, energy, and resources to get set up on a lego platform that they'll need to migrate away from. Looking at the pricing model and data limitations, there's nothing that would make this a better choice than just hooking up to AWS or something similar, directly. Using Airtable would require maintaining some form of middleware for SPA's...and there's no way in the world that you wouldn't be hitting their caps rapidly. Just an extra cost. I'm not saying this product won't work well for a market niche, but that niche is a lot smaller than the buzz words thrown around in today's publications.
- nojvek 9y ago
  52M isn’t chump change in funding. Glad to know VC’s think it’s a big problem. Personally I am working on an Airtable/excel like product but rather than a spreadsheet, you can easily make structured hierarchies. Think rows, which could have more rows, or link to other cells. A very easy way to capture relational data. You can just start writing stuff in cells Define headings and data types later. Like git, it stores version history, let’s you work offline and let’s you sync with others. Let’s you upload markdown, or pictures and files into cells. Define a stricter schemas later. Restrict editing/viewing of cells based on formulas so others can’t easily break what you’ve created. I wrote a little manifesto at orows.com and working on a prototype. Once I have about a 100 users, I plan to quit my job and work on it full time. Think github, but rather than files, an object graph.

mercer 9y ago

It's a lot more user-friendly than Google Sheets, what with the various input methods and the easy 'views' that hide/show/whatever the underlying raw information. Plus, it's really easy to link tables to each other. I might not have looked well enough, but I don't think GSheets can do that without some scripting involved.

thinkloop 9y ago

I think being a competitor to Sheets is the business - there's space for 2 online spreadsheet solutions (Excel online is is a step below).

wanderer2323 9y ago

I wouldn't compare Airtable to Google Spreadsheets or Excel for that matter. It looks more like a non-buggy Web 2.0 FoxPro, an RDBMS with a user-friendly UX.

prepend 9y ago
I wish it was a Web 2.0 FoxPro. It’s maybe the closest, but the price model is too much. You could buy foxpro for $1200 and create 100 databases with all sorts of janky workflows used within your small business. Paying $20/user/infinity for lower amounts of records doesn’t quite fit that niche. And so the hacked processes with Google Docs and now Excel365 continue. Hopefully with this new funding, Airtable can fix their pricing model and become successful as Access was.
- mlloyd 9y ago
  What's the price sweet spot here assuming unlimited (or near unlimited) records allowed?
  - prepend 9y ago
    For me, it’s a one time fee that I can self host or run against AWS or something of my choosing. But I’m pretty weird. I suspect one that has really simple and easily measureable prices. Like $500/year for a terabyte of storage in as many bases as you want. This should let most small businesses not worry about cost. Kind of like how FoxPro let people build so many solutions. The model now is not very predictable so it’s hard for small businesses to use. I think 365 charges $100/user/year for 1TB. That’s for write/edit permissions. Maybe double that or something. So 5 users would give 5TB total for $1000/year. Raw storage may not be the right measure, but it is better than cells since it is easier to report on. Just constantly showing raw or logical space. Imagine if gmail charges by number of email messages in inbox and number of recipients rather than storage. That would be hard to predict.
GFischer 9y ago
And FoxPro was great, so if Airtable is Web 2.0 FoxPro they might be onto something :)

brandonmenc 9y ago

We use it at work for project management. It's an app that sits somewhere between a database and a spreadsheet, bringing the best features of both, that is easily "programmed" by non-programmers, and with a nice looking interface to boot.