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Excel can be replaced, but it won't be replaced by the current crop of VC-funded SaaS. > Airtable really ought to be killing Excel, but the SaaS model combined

Excel can be replaced, but it won't be replaced by the current crop of VC-funded SaaS. > Airtable really ought to be killing Excel, but the SaaS model combined with a stupidly low artificial row count limit (over 50000 rows is listed as "contact us for pricing") means that it will never achieve penetration into weird and wonderful use cases like Excel has. Many Excel processes are 20+ years old. No SaaS could replace the stability and pricing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30871148 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30871148

doctor_eval 5y ago
Airtable is great for throwing together a quick prototype, but it has so many arbitrary-feeling limitations that I’ve never actually used it in anger. It’s a shame, because I really want to like it - but it’s less flexible than a spreadsheet, and less powerful than a database.
motohagiography 5y ago
The ability to email a spreadsheet and have it just work on the other side (and become the recipients copy they can fork a version and "own") is huge. In a SaaS situation, you have to solve IAM and security vs. leveraging what users already have as a sunk cost in email and windows. When we think of document based workflows as a problem (vs. say just the data/info), we tend to think of them as inefficient and prone to duplication, forking, editing, versioning problems - but I'd argue these are valuable features because they create levers for managing. Maybe I've spent too much time staring into the enterprise abyss and this is the inner deadness of a consultant speaking, but what documents facilitate (e.g. MS Office) is flexibility of ownership, provenance, authenticity, sources of truth, authority, and other qualities. When you solve a problem, it becomes inert, there is nothing about it to manage anymore, which means someone can't extract value from it, and that's value destruction to them. SaaS problematizes these document features and then "solves," them, which in fact just constrains managers by concretizing data and workflows instead of being a tool that provides some data that ultimately supports a narrative conversation without being a forcing function on a dynamic of ongoing "problems" that is producing value for the business. I'd suggest this is the quiet part your SaaS prospect customers can't say out loud, because managing isn't solving problems, it's extracting value from them, and using tech to collapse dynamics that are producing value is anti-value from that perspective.

doctor_eval 5y ago

Airtable is great for throwing together a quick prototype, but it has so many arbitrary-feeling limitations that I’ve never actually used it in anger. It’s a shame, because I really want to like it - but it’s less flexible than a spreadsheet, and less powerful than a database.

motohagiography 5y ago

The ability to email a spreadsheet and have it just work on the other side (and become the recipients copy they can fork a version and "own") is huge. In a SaaS situation, you have to solve IAM and security vs. leveraging what users already have as a sunk cost in email and windows. When we think of document based workflows as a problem (vs. say just the data/info), we tend to think of them as inefficient and prone to duplication, forking, editing, versioning problems - but I'd argue these are valuable features because they create levers for managing. Maybe I've spent too much time staring into the enterprise abyss and this is the inner deadness of a consultant speaking, but what documents facilitate (e.g. MS Office) is flexibility of ownership, provenance, authenticity, sources of truth, authority, and other qualities. When you solve a problem, it becomes inert, there is nothing about it to manage anymore, which means someone can't extract value from it, and that's value destruction to them. SaaS problematizes these document features and then "solves," them, which in fact just constrains managers by concretizing data and workflows instead of being a tool that provides some data that ultimately supports a narrative conversation without being a forcing function on a dynamic of ongoing "problems" that is producing value for the business. I'd suggest this is the quiet part your SaaS prospect customers can't say out loud, because managing isn't solving problems, it's extracting value from them, and using tech to collapse dynamics that are producing value is anti-value from that perspective.