Interview with Howie Liu, co-founder & CEO of Airtable

Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. The company has taken the world by storm since its creation and has recently raised $185 million in a Series D round, reaching a valuation of $2.585 billion. However, even as the company’s valuation soars, Howie has clearly expressed no interest in exiting. In this episode, Howie walks us through his entrepreneurial journey – from building his first company Etacts (acquired by Salesforce) to launching Airtable. We talk about Airtable’s beginnings, ambition to take on some of the biggest industry players, and its long term vision to democratize software creation.Topics: [0:22] Intro[1:12] Why getting acquired is not an end goal for Airtable[2:40] Howie’s background: Etacts (first company acquired by Salesforce) and launching Airtable[4:03] How the idea of Airtable came about[5:20] Building a product that goes up against big players: Salesforce, Excel, Google Sheets[8:02] Building Airtable: what did the V1 of Airtable look like, how did they iterate subsequently, the importance of changing how did they get people to use the product, etc.[12:40] The importance of picking a smaller sub-problem rather than taking on big players head on[13:16] Why did Airtable take 3 years to build: focus on the technology[15:18] Investors[16:22] Number of businesses that use Airtable[16:40] Airtable’s growth story[18:47] Airtable vs. a productivity tool: a distinction in product depth[21:20] The low-code movement[25:19] What can we expect to see from Airtable in the coming months and on the long term[27:13] The most surprising use case of Airtable (spoiler: 🤠 included) STATION F: The Podcast is hosted by Roxanne Varza, and produced by Cindy Yang. Art is by Gaëtan Lefebvre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.