Airtable – Startup Story | Founder| CEO | Funding | History | Competitors

Introduction:

In both the planning and execution of these events, Airtable has taken centre stage. Each speaker receives an Airtable form with fields for their headshot, bio, and other information as soon as possible. As a result of their responses being recorded, a database called “Speakers” is automatically filled with data. In order to coordinate scheduling and, if necessary, change panels or speakers, Lancaster used linked record fields to link the “Agenda” database to the speaker table.

About:

Airtable used a variety of templates in their marketing plan because they understood how valuable templates are, particularly in the B2B market. The template landing page receives over 9500 visitors from organic search per month, with an organic traffic value of $42.4K, thanks to its ranking for over 16.4K organic keywords. For any brand to now achieve comparable outcomes, a marketing investment of at least $42,400 is required.

The value that Airtable’s template library delivers is the most astounding aspect of this tactic. The landing page features a number of use examples that demonstrate what the programme can do for various businesses.

The project had great potential, but it was discontinued less than a year after Marc Benioff’s Salesforce purchased the business for an undisclosed sum. Liu’s contact manager solution piqued interest from other companies outside just Salesforce. Etacts was being courted by a number of other businesses with offers. Despite Etacts’ brief existence, Liu was already working to find a solution to the issue of how individuals could get more value out of their data—a challenge he would attack even more forcefully with Airtable.

Although Liu later admitted to Business Insider that he had personally earned “in the low seven figures on day one at Salesforce,” Liu also stated that the CRM giant’s major focus on the enterprise was one of the main reasons he sold his company to Salesforce. Liu was inspired by Benioff’s career progression at Oracle and wanted to learn more from him.

Website : https://www.airtable.com/home/toolkit

Founder & Team:

Airtable, which was founded in 2012, offers an alternative to the spreadsheet, one of the most important yet sometimes disregarded software tools on which most of society depends. Howie Liu, the creator of Airtable, had no desire to create a superior spreadsheet. He wished to completely reimagine the spreadsheet.

The goal of Liu’s project was to enable non-programmers to build what are essentially applications. Liu believed that most people were using spreadsheets in ways they were never intended to be used, despite the fact that they were employed in virtually every facet of daily life. Liu asserts that although spreadsheets are effective tools, they were not intended to be used for the majority of tasks.

History:

The actor Ashton Kutcher was one of the investors who contributed $700,000 to Liu’s startup of the CRM software company Etacts in February 2010. Salesforce purchased Etacts in less than a year to use the innovative technology into its own applications. As a product manager at Salesforce, Liu recognised an opportunity to expand the scope of spreadsheets beyond mathematical analysis.

After a year, Liu left his job out of obsession and co-founded Airtable with Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas. This effective approach enables non-techies to create straightforward, user-friendly apps more quickly, enhancing team productivity and business expansion.

2012 – 2014: Welcome to the Grid:

Howie Liu intended to improve email as a sales tool years before his second business (Airtable) redesigned the database. Etacts was Liu’s first startup, which he started in 2010. It was an easy concept. A CRM for managing email contacts was called Etacts. Ashton Kutcher, an investor in technology and an actor, contributed $700,000 to Liu’s startup company. Kutcher called Liu after hearing a product demo at Y Combinator’s Demo Day in 2010.

2015 – 2016: Democratizing the Database:

2015 for Airtable got off to a fantastic start with a product that had much of potential. However, the company required cash in order for Airtable to grow and add new services. The development of Airtable as a product and the expansion of the company both depended on the years 2015 and 2016. In the first version of Airtable, users could dynamically arrange their data in a simple grid. The next stage was to develop more “views” to aid users in organising that information using its calendar and kanban views in more practical and understandable ways.

2015 got underway for Liu’s business with a $3M seed financing lead by Caffeinated Capital in February. Airtable was finally made available to the general public in March, not long after this infusion of funds. Even the corporation was taken aback by the inventive ways customers were utilising the product, despite the fact that the product’s predefined templates had proven popular with new users.

2017 – Present: The Building Blocks of Growth:

For the past few years, Airtable had concentrated on the look and feel of the product. The company has used the community’s willingness to observe and listen to the product as a fertile lab of creative potential to find additional features and prospective use cases. The feature that allowed non-technical users the strength of a relational database with the approachable, user-friendly UI of a spreadsheet was possibly Airtable’s most innovative feature. However, after accepting a sizeable amount in venture cash, pressure was mounting to expand even more.

Name & Logo:

Airtable Highlight:

Revenue:

• The funding from Airtable increases the startup’s value to $11.7 billion.
• With 300K users, AirTable generated $142M in revenue in 2022.

Funding & Investors:

In its Series C round, headed by Benchmark and Thrive Capital in November 2018, Airtable raised $100 million. With this money, the firm planned to create more offices outside of the US, thus increasing its physical presence. It’s interesting that the business’s Series B investment valued it at only $152 million, a figure the company challenged as being too low but declined to support with its own numbers. But thanks to the company’s Series C investment, Airtable was valued at about $1.1 billion.

Many small firms use Airtable as a way to organise their business data. Users of the software can build numerous different database structures that can be applied to a range of commercial endeavours. Investors just contributed $270 million to the company.

In September 2020, Airtable raised $185 million in a Series D round, bringing its valuation from $1.1 billion to $2.585 billion. The massive $270 million Series E in March 2021 increased the company’s value to $5.8 billion. That is a rather high valuation for a privately held business whose creator, Howie Liu, claims there are no plans to go public anytime soon.

Business Model:

The software has a restricted free version. The monthly cost of the premium Plus edition is $12 (year savings of $120). The monthly fee for each user of the premium Pro version is $20 (billed annually). Estimated annual income for Airtable ranges from $47.9 million, according to GrowJo, to $65 million, according to LATKA. Since the business is private, no financial data is disclosed.

There are currently more than 250,000 users, and if they do not receive an enterprise-level discount, they must pay at least $120 per user each year. Airtable employs 417 people (August 2021). Since last year, the number of Airtable employees has roughly doubled. $114,748 is the estimated annual wage for each employee. Enterprise-level tech corporations like Tesla, who pay an annual membership fee for its 70,000+ Tesla employees, are Airtable’s biggest clients.

The sales team at Airtable negotiates the annual recurring revenue (ARR) from enterprise customers on a case-by-case basis. A-E Networks, Autodesk, Buzzfeed, Condé Nast Entertainment, Cole Hann, Expedia, Medium, Netflix, Shopify, Time, and numerous other significant corporations also use Airtable.

Services Offered thru Airtable:

Relate everything. Obtain anything. By connecting your data, workflows, and teams, smart apps can speed up work and unleash potential.

Bring all workstreams together. Make a single source of truth that is specifically suited to the methods used by your teams. Include only the information you require.

new interface with the workplace Create unique user interfaces that provide each team member with the pertinent information they require and a quick way to take action.

assemble all of your info. all of your data. always current. at your disposal. Maintain consistency throughout your organisation.

Awards & Recognition:

Airtable is a platform for building collaborative applications. Integrate with all your favorite apps and services. 200+ Templates. 350+ App Integrations.

Competitors:

The Best Airtable Alternatives of 2022.

• monday.com.
• ClickUp.
• Microsoft Planner.
• Notion.
• Confluence.
• Teamwork.
• Basecamp.

Latest News:

software launch The most recent fundraising for Airtable values company at $11 billion and brings on Salesforce and Michael Dell as investors. Airtable, a provider of enterprise software, has raised $735 million in a Series F fundraising round, raising its valuation to $11 billion. The startup, which is based in San Francisco, has now raised close to $1.4 billion.

Future Plans:

There is no data of it.

Some FAQs:

Is Airtable a unicorn?

We knew Airtable was magical, but we didn’t know it was mythical. The hybrid spreadsheet database just raised an additional $100 million in new funding, for a total valuation of $1.1 billion, the company said today. That would officially make Airtable a unicorn, or a startup valued at more than $1 billion.

Who invested in Airtable?

Airtable has 50 investors including Salesforce Ventures and Silver Lake . How much funding has Airtable raised to date? Airtable has raised $1.4B.

How much money has Airtable raised?

Is Airtable a private company?

Airtable does not currently have an official ticker symbol because this company is still private.

How many employees does Airtable have?

AirTable has raised 756 employees.

Is Airtable a good company to work for?

Airtable has an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5, based on over 71 reviews left anonymously by employees. 88% of employees would recommend working at Airtable to a friend and 96% have a positive outlook for the business.

Conclusion:

Some of the most innovative businesses in Silicon Valley and beyond, including as Airbnb, Conde Nast Entertainment, Penguin Random House, Tesla, and WeWork, were already utilising Airtable. According to the news release that was released alongside the round, the company’s corporate users alone numbered over 30,000. Liu and the business as a whole refused to discuss exact numbers, though.

According to Liu, who spoke with Business Insider, Airtable’s user base is “in the seven digits,” and its revenue has surged by more than 500% year over year. The Tesla sale alone was allegedly “in the six figures,” demonstrating the importance of Airtable to major corporations as well as the potential future direction that investors might anticipate for the business.