Airtable: How it Achieved The Worth of $5.8 Billion

    Incorporated in 2012, Airtable currently ranks among the best cloud collaboration services in the world. The company has its headquarters in San Francisco, California. 

    The Founders 

    Airtable was founded by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas in 2012. It is a collaborative software website and serves the Internet industry. Liu, Ofstad, and Nicholas believed that software shouldn’t dictate how people work. Rather, they should dictate how the software functions. Their goal was to democratize software generation by allowing anybody to develop the tools that fulfil their requirements. Innovative people across the world are now using the Airtable app to do anything from cinematography to cattle tracking. 

    Airtable is a spreadsheet-database fusion that has the characteristics of a database but implemented to a spreadsheet. 

    The fields comprising an Airtable table have resemblances with the cells of a spreadsheet. However, there are categories like ‘phone number’, ‘checkbox’, and ‘drop-down list’. It can cite attachments similar to pictures.

    With the help of Airtable, users can make a database, include records, arrange column types, collaborate, link tables to each other, screen documents, and release views to other websites. Airtable utilizes 256-bit SSL/TLS encryption in data transfer as well for security purposes.

    Timeline of Airtable

    • 2012: Foundation of Airtable took place.
    • February 2015: Collected $3 million from Freestyle Capital, Caffeinated Capital, CrunchFund, and Data Collective.
    • April 2015: The API (application program interface) and embedded databases of the company were launched.
    • May 2015: Procured financing to the tune of $7.6 million from Ashton Kutcher and Charles River Ventures.
    • July 2015: Launched Airtable Forms for gathering and managing data.
    • August 2015: The “Add to Slack” feature was introduced by Airtable to combine Slack with Airtable.
    • December 2015: The iOS app of Airtable got restyled.
    • December 2015: Launching of a barcode of Airtable as a new field category.
    • March 2018: Procured $52 million as Series B financing; declaration of the introduction of Airtable Blocks.
    • November 2018: Procured $100 million as Series C financing.
    • September 2020: Procured $185 million as Series D financing.

    Fundamental Elements of Airtable

    There are six fundamental elements of Airtable:

    1) Bases  

    A base holds all the details necessary for generating a project. Users can develop bases from the prevailing templates offered by Airtable. Besides, they can make it from scratch, either from a prevailing Base or a spreadsheet.  

    2) Views 

    Views demonstrate the outcome collections of data inquiries. Users can save them for future reference.

    3) Tables

    A table is comparable to a spreadsheet. A set of tables is known as a base. 

    4) Records

    Every row of a table is termed a Record.

    5) Workspaces 

    In Airtable, a workspace is a set of Bases.

    6) Fields 

    Every item of data in a table is a field. Their usage is not confined to contain text. There are 16 fundamental field categories available from Airtable and they are long text articles, single-line texts, check-boxes, file attachments, multiple-selects from drop-down lists, single select from the drop-down list, telephone numbers, date and time, URLs, email ids, currencies, numbers, auto-number, percentage, barcodes, and formulae.

    Salient features of Airtable that have made it popular among users

    The features that have made Airtable a handy option among users are the following:

    1) Collaboration

    Airtable enables multiple users to function at the same time with the same base. As a result, there is higher efficiency at the workplace. You can include a new collaborator by clicking on the share button at the upper portion of Base and offering the collaborator’s email id. The authorization level of the collaborator can be set by the possessor at the time of sharing the Base. Airtable offers three authorization levels in Base i.e. “Edit Only”, “Creator”, and “Read Only”. 

    If there is a necessity of multiple bases, Airtable creates a team. There can be multiple Bases at the team and the collaborators can operate on all the accessible Bases of the team. In Team, there are four authorization tiers, which is different from a Base that just features three. The additional authorization tier in Team is Possessor, who has absolute accessibility to Team Base.   

    2) Linking between tables

    To evade the requirement to create one exclusive big table while there is associated data in various tables, Airtable offers an alternative to connect documents of separate tables. The company enables connecting prevailing tables of associated documents, generating a new connected table and many links between prevailing tables as well.     

    3) Airtable Forms  

    In July 2015, the company launched Forms. They can be utilized for gathering information from others such as customers, colleagues, or the general public. Form creation is simple from a prevailing Base. The data procured by the Form is routinely coordinated in the Airtable Base. The company permits the user to structure the necessary fields in the Form. A distinct link is generated for each Airtable Form. The users can share this link with others for collecting the necessary information. The users have the option to embed an Airtable Form in a website for obtaining the reactions from the users of the site.  

    4) Publishing Views

    Users can share views with the general public without any difficulties. An individual does not have to be an Airtable Account Holder for viewing the released views. These view-exclusive Bases shared for the general public are known as Airtable views. A user can embed these views into his personal website and permit the users of the website to find the real-time data in Base, with no requirement of an Airtable account. One probable application instance is the Airtable Form that can be utilized for reviewing a product. The reaction obtained from a consumer can be demonstrated to the general public as well through sharing the Airtable View. 

    5) Airtable Integration

    The API (application program interface) of Airtable can be utilized for linking to other web services through which data can be swapped between Airtable and outside web applications. With the help of the Zapier platform, Airtable can link to more than 450 sites and apps, starting from GitHub and Google apps to Twitter and Slack. Modifications can be installed as generators for activities in linked applications. You can connect Airtable to Excel with no coding required to merge numerous data and create advanced analytics. 

    6) Snapshot

    Airtable offers a higher advancement for backing up the data instead of only permitting the users to undo/redo. The company takes informal photographs of the Base intermittently. If an earlier edition of a Base is required, the user chooses the suitable snapshot from the list of snapshots. Furthermore, the user can take informal photos (snapshot) of a Base by hand whenever he likes.

    7) Mobile App

    In December 2015, Airtable launched its edition of the iOS 2.0 application, enabling customers to work on tables from their iPhones. Airtable for Android is also there. The app has turned into a roaring success, drawing high-profile customers like Tesla, Netflix, and Time Magazine.  

    8) API (Application Program Interface) 

    The company offers an API to render capacity to users for developing apps that can’t be developed within the table restraints. A key, which lies in the overview segment, is required for implementing the API of Airtable. The key has to be kept confidential. The Application Program Interface goes by REST semantics, applies JSON for encrypting articles, and utilizes customary HTTP codes for indicating operation results.

    The secret behind Airtable’s success

    Probably, the most brilliant aspect of Airtable’s products and services was that it offered people without technical knowledge the ability to work with a relational database with the accessibility and user-friendliness of the User Interface of a spreadsheet. Howie Liu, one of the founders of Airtable, showed people the way how spreadsheets can be used in a never-before way and apps can be generated without the need for a single line of code. He wished to recreate the spreadsheet wholly. Continuous rolling out of new features made Airtable grossly popular. Of late, Airtable proclaimed a Series E round financing to the tune of $270 million at an estimation of $5.8 billion with investments from Villi Iltchev, partner of Two Sigma Ventures, a venture capital company based in New York.


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