People keep calling out how this isn't a new solution/idea (i.e. MS Access, FileMaker, SmartSheet, Google Sheets + Scripts, Knack) and those people I hope under

People keep calling out how this isn't a new solution/idea (i.e. MS Access, FileMaker, SmartSheet, Google Sheets + Scripts, Knack) and those people I hope understand that Airtable's success has everything to do with their execution of this idea not that the idea is somehow groundbreaking. I've used many of those ^ products and I can tell you they are no where near Airtable's level of UX. The Airtable team has obviously taken a lot of time and energy to really nail the design and user experience instead of making another "just good enough". I think this is also a good example of how desperate users will resort to using subpar products or cobbling-together numerous subpar solutions if the problem is painful enough. Having used MS Access a decade ago I can tell you it was out of desperation and it never really solved the problem- it sort of got you ~75% there. One last thing I'll mention is that when you take on something as flexible as Airtable you end up dealing with an much larger dimension of possible edge-cases and more importantly you end up challenging designers to craft constraints on the users very thoughtfully so that you're not limiting them but also you're not overwhelming them with too much complexity. In other words- solutions in this space succeed precisely because they figure out how to walk that fine line not because the idea itself is earth-shattering.