How smart UX can lead to company success with Howie Liu from Airtable

The Future of Work and Airtable's Role

• The future of work involves products that redefine tedious ways of doing things and make jobs easier, with Airtable being an example of such a product that allows users to work smarter, not harder (7s).
• Airtable is a low-code platform for building collaborative apps, founded by Howie Liu, and has been allowing users to work more efficiently for the past 13 years (10s).
• The company's vision is to make it easy for anyone to build useful apps for internal company operations, such as marketing, product, or content operations (1m32s).
• Initially, the product looked like a spreadsheet, but it has evolved to focus on bigger, higher-scale, and more strategic use cases, especially within high-growth or high-scale companies (2m10s).

Howie Liu's Vision and Inspiration for Airtable

• Howie Liu's interest in building a meta-app, an app that allows users to build other apps, dates back to his high school days when he learned how to program and started building different apps (2m32s).
• His idea to launch Airtable was influenced by his experience building apps and wanting to make it easier for anyone to build an app without needing to program (3m14s).
• Liu's goal is to make it easy for anyone to build useful apps and get the value of building an app, regardless of their programming skills (3m18s).
• The initial inspiration for Airtable came from the founder's first startup, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2010, where they saw the power of having a completely configurable platform (3m28s).
• Working at Salesforce showed the potential of a platform with a data layer, logic layer, and interface layer, which inspired the idea to build a consumer-accessible version of this app platform (3m40s).
• The realization that the company would need to be a platform came before its launch, as platforms are often necessary to achieve meaningful market share in certain areas (4m42s).

Building a Platform vs. a Solution

• Building a platform is harder than starting with one space and expanding, but the founder's stubbornness and resistance to conventional logic helped drive the company forward (5m16s).
• The company faced pushback from investors who believed it was impossible to build a platform from day one, and instead advised launching a solution first (5m43s).
• There are three types of products: features, which are thin and small; products, which start as features but evolve; and platforms, which are general-purpose and use-case agnostic (5m56s).
• A third category, solutions, are dedicated to one specific use case, often in one industry, and are not as flexible as platforms (6m27s).
• Procore is an example of a complete and robust solution for construction project management, but it is limited to that specific use case, whereas Airtable aimed to create a more generalizable platform that could be used for a variety of use cases (6m36s).
• Investors initially advised against building a platform, suggesting that it would be hard to market and that it would be better to focus on a smaller market niche or a specific use case, such as healthcare electronic medical records (6m45s).
• However, Airtable believed that a more generalizable platform that was easy to use could overcome the traditional barriers to launching a platform (7m14s).

Airtable's Rise and Replacing Spreadsheets

• Before Airtable existed, companies were using spreadsheets as a makeshift app platform for various use cases, including workflow management and database applications (7m53s).
• Spreadsheets were originally designed for number crunching and accounting, but they evolved over time to be used for more applike use cases due to their ease of use (8m33s).
• Airtable replaced spreadsheets as the primary tool for many users, but it also attracted users who had previously used database products like Microsoft Access and FileMaker Pro (9m5s).
• FileMaker Pro, in particular, had a large user base, and Airtable was able to tap into this market by offering a modernized, web-based, and collaborative alternative (9m28s).
• Airtable's user base includes people from various roles and industries, including nonprofits, product managers, sales teams, and media and entertainment companies (8m9s).
• Airtable's early users came from various production backgrounds, such as production, operations, and post-production, and were avid users of FileMaker for their workflows, but they quickly adapted to Airtable's modern app platform and database. (9m56s)

Airtable's Founding and Growth

• Airtable's founding in 2013 coincided with a shift in consumer and business behavior, as well as advancements in technology, allowing the company to adapt and ride the changes in the market. (10m21s)
• Airtable's founders spent 2.5 to 3 years building a robust product offering, creating a desktop-grade experience on the web using cutting-edge technologies like real-time collaborative experiences, server-side technologies, and robust front-end components. (10m55s)
• The company benefited from the tech trend of the time, which allowed for the creation of truly desktop-grade web experiences, making it possible to build collaborative and real-time applications on the web. (11m34s)
• Airtable also tapped into the trend of people bringing their own tools to work, adopting their own tools, and expecting consumer-grade experiences for work tools, which was a new phenomenon at the time. (12m2s)
• The company has been able to ride the wave of these trends for the past decade, and these trends have been layered with new technologies, such as AI, which is the current trend. (12m39s)
• The trend that Airtable rode was built on top of cloud computing, which had already been happening for 10 years prior, and cloud computing was itself a layer on top of internet services and products, consumer experiences, and personal computing. (12m57s)
• The company's starting point was building a layer of rich web collaborative experiences, and now they are rapidly figuring out how to take advantage of AI to enrich the product experience, which is game-changing for them as a build-anything app platform (13m14s).

AI and its Impact on Airtable

• AI allows the company to make it easy for anyone to come in and build an app using natural language, with a feature called Co-builder that can infer what an app should look like based on its knowledge of the user's needs (13m45s).
• The company is seeing interesting use cases pop up as they give their builders the ability to put AI into their apps, such as customers taking AI capabilities from top LLMs and plugging them into workflows that the company wouldn't have thought of themselves (14m12s).
• An example of this is customers using AI to extract key insights from earnings calls and financial data, saving hours of work (14m38s).
• The company believes that the missing thing in AI is the right form factor and the right way to shape AI into a useful form, especially in work that's meaningful and recurring (15m7s).
• The next frontier of innovation is happening in the space of shaping AI into a useful form for work, which is exciting for the company (15m21s).

Airtable's Organic Growth and Marketing

• The company got popular during the "bring your own tech to work" era, with individuals leading to larger enterprise contracts, and they were able to sell themselves through organic product-led growth and word of mouth (16m2s).
• The company didn't have salespeople or do much paid marketing, relying on people hearing about Airtable through friends, press articles, or coworkers, and then signing up for themselves (16m10s).
• The company's goal was to make it easy for people to start using Airtable and getting value out of it, with a focus on making it easy to use and providing value quickly (16m33s).
• Airtable's early success was largely due to its intuitive product design, which allowed users to experience its value firsthand, rather than relying on a sales pitch (16m39s).
• The company initially struggled to find a succinct way to describe its product, but its ease of use and robust features led to organic adoption (16m46s).
• Airtable's adoption grew rapidly as users within larger companies saw the benefits of the product and began using it in their teams (17m46s).
• The company's success can be attributed to a new model of B2B team-centric virality, where products gain traction within companies through internal adoption and connections between teams (18m16s).

Airtable's Enterprise Go-to-Market Motion

• Airtable's data team has created network diagrams to visualize the connections between different nodes of adoption within its customers, showcasing the complex web of interrelated use cases (18m44s).
• The company has built an evolutionary Enterprise go-to-market motion on top of its core product-led growth engine, allowing it to work with customers and help them architect use cases that span entire companies or departments (19m16s).
• Airtable's goal is to help customers think more top-down about how to architect use cases that can span their entire organization, rather than just relying on organic team adoption (19m30s).
• This requires a new approach and a new set of skills, which Airtable has been developing over the past five to six years (19m52s).

Initial Reactions and Evolving Perceptions of Airtable

• When Airtable first came out, people either immediately understood and loved it, or they were unsure of what it was, similar to the Apple Jacks example, where those who got it were extremely enthusiastic, with some users even creating careers around becoming Airtable experts (19m54s).
• The initial reaction to Airtable was mixed, with some people trying to pitch it to others by showing their use cases, but there wasn't a clear one-liner that perfectly described what Airtable is (21m4s).
• Over time, Airtable has built goodwill around certain concepts like no-code and its ability to scale up to certain operations, especially in functions like marketing and product and content operations within various industries (21m33s).
• Airtable has become known for its ability to power content production and marketing operations in the media industry, and for powering parts of the creative operations process, merchandising operations, or digital product operations in retail companies (21m56s).

Airtable's Design Inspiration and Philosophy

• The design of the Airtable platform was inspired by two main sources, one of which is Lego, with the goal of creating a platform that is colorful, fun, educational, and powerful, allowing users to build something powerful with minimal limitations (22m43s).
• Airtable's design inspiration comes from a life-size Millennium Falcon built with Legos, evoking a sense of creativity and building with colorful pieces, and also from the movie Big Hero 6, which idealizes technology as human-friendly and empowering (23m2s).
• The movie Big Hero 6 features a contrast between an evil character's Nanobots and the friendly robot Baymax, representing a human-complimentary vision of technology, which resonated deeply and influenced Airtable's design style system (23m22s).
• Airtable's design aims to be approachable, soft, and built for human ergonomics, with features like rounded corners, to make it accessible to users who are not highly specialized technical people (24m19s).
• The goal is to make humans the builders and tinkerers, rather than replacing them with fully automated or arcane technology (24m36s).

Airtable's Approach to AI and Data Privacy

• Airtable does not train its AI with customer data, instead relying on generalized foundation models from companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, which are getting increasingly good at generalized reasoning (25m25s).
• Airtable takes the out-of-the-box reasoning capabilities of these large language models (LLMs) and focuses its efforts on providing the data and context for specific use cases, rather than developing custom models from scratch (26m6s).
• To achieve great results with AI, it's essential to provide the model with the right context, such as the use case and desired architecture, which can be done by giving it additional context about the task at hand (26m49s).
• UX and human-computer interaction are crucial, as AI is not yet capable of completely replacing humans in most substantial tasks and requires human supervision to produce valuable results (27m9s).
• Human supervision and feedback are necessary to make AI outputs valuable, and creating a feedback loop where humans can easily edit AI outputs is essential for improving the model over time (27m39s).
• The key to unlocking AI value is to take general-purpose models and shape them with the right context data and human guidance (28m25s).

Howie Liu's Entrepreneurial Journey

• The founder's journey as an entrepreneur began at a young age, with experiences such as selling Pokémon cards on eBay and building Pokémon websites, which taught him the value of building things from scratch and creating value in the world (29m1s).
• The founder's early experiences with entrepreneurship, such as selling Pokémon cards and building websites, helped shape his passion for building things from scratch and creating value, ultimately leading him to become a founder (29m11s).
• Creating value in the world can be achieved by building something from scratch with limited resources, which can be a fun and rewarding experience, especially for those from modest backgrounds who have to be scrappy (29m52s).
• Learning about tech, software, and programming in high school can be an exciting experience, especially during the web 1.0 bubble, and can lead to a desire to be part of the tech industry (30m22s).
• With programming skills, it's possible to build almost any kind of product in software with time and ingenuity, without needing existing investment capital or physical products (30m52s).
• Taking the leap to pursue a startup career path can be daunting, especially when forgoing a traditional career path and a stable job with a steady income (31m17s).
• The decision to pursue a startup career can be influenced by factors such as the desire for autonomy and the willingness to take risks, and can be a scary but ultimately rewarding experience (31m45s).
• Having a supportive network, such as a co-founder, can help make the startup journey more legitimate and less daunting (32m32s).
• Getting through a program like Y Combinator can help establish a startup career path as a legitimate and viable option (32m38s).
• The first exposure to the startup world can be intimidating, but it can also be a transformative experience that opens up new possibilities and opportunities (32m46s).

Airtable's Impact and Diverse Use Cases

• The process of understanding and utilizing user experience (UX) becomes more natural with exposure and experience, and it has been a crucial factor in the success of companies like Airtable (32m57s).
• Airtable's app has been used by people from various industries to build different apps, and one of the most interesting use cases was the creation of nonprofit relief efforts after natural disasters, such as the Soma fires (33m16s).
• These grassroots organizations used Airtable to build their operating systems, dispatch volunteers, and manage relief efforts, including a food donation and delivery system for frontline workers by World Central Kitchen (33m40s).
• Discovering surprising use cases and businesses through Airtable has been exciting, including small mom and pop restaurants in Southeast Asia using the platform to manage employee shifts and food inventory (34m26s).
• The diversity of businesses using Airtable provides a perfect cross-section of different types of businesses worldwide, making it fascinating to see how they utilize the platform (34m47s).

Early Challenges and Reflections on Airtable's Launch

• One of the favorite questions to ask founders is about funny mishap stories, and in the case of Airtable, there were scary moments, especially in the early days, after spending 2.5 years building the product (35m9s).
• The lead-up to the launch was a moment of uncertainty, and in hindsight, it would have been beneficial to move faster with more urgency, even if it meant shaving off a few months from the 2.5-year development period (35m47s).
• In the early days of a company, the CEO may have to take on various tasks, including menial jobs, to ensure the business runs smoothly, as exemplified by the experience of plugging toilets in a shared bathroom (36m10s).

Airtable's Long-Term Vision and Focus

• Airtable has been around since 2013, has raised a significant amount of venture money, and is focused on building a successful business rather than planning for an exit (36m41s).
• The company's philosophy is that the opportunity in their space is large enough to become a business similar in size to Salesforce or ServiceNow, with revenue potentially exceeding $10 billion or $30 billion (37m0s).
• Airtable's main focus is on building the best business and achieving long-term success, rather than planning for an initial public offering (IPO) (37m24s).
• The company is currently at a scale where it could be a public company, with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, healthy growth, and cash flow generation (37m37s).
• The decision to go public would be a mechanical one, based on whether it would help with publicity, customer visibility, and capital needs, which are currently not necessary with $1 billion on the balance sheet (37m51s).
• Airtable is focused on breakthrough execution, especially around AI and transitioning to bigger use cases, aiming to be the operating system for enterprises to run important digital use cases (38m10s).
• Going public is not in the company's near-term plans, with a focus on building a great business over the next year and beyond (38m30s).

The Role of "Bring Your Own Tech to Work"

• Airtable's growth was largely driven by word of mouth and users bringing the product to work, rather than a creative enterprise sales approach (38m51s).
• The concept of "bring your own Tech to work" was a significant factor in the adoption of many tech tools used in the workplace today, including Slack (39m20s).
• The concept of "bring your own Tech to work" is discussed, where employees introduce new technology to their workplace, but it's unclear if this is still possible with advanced cybersecurity measures in place (39m31s).
• The example of Slack is mentioned, where employees would join a mysterious group chat and hope the company would allow it, but it's uncertain if this approach can be scaled (39m56s).
• The idea of employees finding their own tools to use at work is explored, but it's noted that not everyone is inclined to do so, and some may simply accept the tools provided by their company (40m25s).
• A recent example of bringing your own Tech to work is attempting to convince a company to adopt a company-wide Grammarly subscription (40m41s).

Airtable's Design and Personalization

• The design of Airtable is discussed, which was inspired by the children's movie Big Hero 6 and features soft edges, making it a fun and intentional product (41m5s).
• The importance of personalization in product design is highlighted, as seen in Airtable and Slack, which can make a product more enjoyable to use (42m19s).
• The personalization aspect of Airtable is credited with making it more fun to use, especially compared to traditional spreadsheet tools like Excel (42m21s).
• Slack and Figma gained popularity because they were enjoyable to use and had an extra appeal, making users more likely to choose them over company-mandated software (42m43s).

Building a Career Around Platforms like Airtable

• Some people have built careers around being experts in specific platforms, such as Airtable, which can be seen as a risky move since their business relies on a platform that can change its rules at any time (43m7s).
• Airtable's goals and intentions differ from those of companies like Amazon, which focuses on selling products with high margins, whereas Airtable approaches its business differently (43m41s).
• Building a career around platforms like Airtable can be a viable option, and some people have successfully done so by offering services such as building custom solutions for clients (43m51s).

Airtable's Platform Strategy and Venture Capital

• The idea of being a platform rather than a feature has become a significant conversation in the B2B world, with many companies wanting to offer platforms that users can build upon (44m17s).
• Airtable was intentional about positioning itself as a platform from the beginning, even when pitching to investors, who initially thought this goal was too lofty (44m36s).
• The disconnect between what venture capitalists say and how they invest can be seen in the case of Airtable, which likely would have struggled to secure funding if it hadn't established itself as a platform early on (44m54s).
• If Airtable had started as a feature, it might have focused on a single vertical and embedded itself into a larger product, but this approach would have limited its potential (45m0s).
• The importance of timing and messaging in securing funding and establishing a company's identity is crucial, as seen in Airtable's case (45m26s).

Production Team and Credits

• The team behind the production includes senior reporter Dominic-Madori Davis, producer Maggie Stamitz, editor Kell Our, and illustrator Bryce Durban (45m59s).
• Audience development and social media are managed by Morgan Little, Alysa Stringer, and Natalie Chman (46m7s).
• TechCrunch's audio products are managed by Henry Pickovitz (46m11s).
• The team thanks the listeners and announces their return the following week (46m16s).