Airtable lays off over 250(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Airtable lays off over 250
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/airtable-layoffs/
116 comments
People complain when layoffs don't touch execs and ask where the accountability is. Maybe this is that?
(That doesn't preclude it being worrying for the business.)
(That doesn't preclude it being worrying for the business.)
Personally I always wonder if it's less "laid off to face consequences" and more "the adverse selection post-layoff quitting where people with the most opportunity leave for greener pastures".
interesting how the chief people officer was able to leave twice in one day...
linked article makes it clear that it was the chief product officer
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/airtable-chief-revenue-off...
linked article makes it clear that it was the chief product officer
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/airtable-chief-revenue-off...
Chief people officer was repeated in the article before, they probably edited it.
1250 people is a hell of a lot. Especially if they're paying SV wages that $725m is only going to last a few years. They will have looked at their growth and realised they will run out of money long before reaching profitability.
Isn't this what everyone is asking for? If you over hire and have to layoff people, heads should roll at the executive level for leading to this.
I think the GP's implication was that it's more like rats fleeing a sinking ship rather than heads rolling.
do you think they are going to fire themselves? lolol
Airtable being valued at $11B is completely nuts. Sure it's kinda useful but the valuation was completely bonkers and I wouldn't be surprised if it hurts them down the road as they'll never really meet expectations a $11B valuation brings.
Startup valuations != market cap.
It's a trick VCs play.
They aren't buying typical common stock. They're buying preferred stock. They won't get wiped out in bankruptcy like typical common stock shareholders.
It's a $725M minimum valuation. Not an $11B market cap - as it would be for a public company.
It's a trick VCs play.
They aren't buying typical common stock. They're buying preferred stock. They won't get wiped out in bankruptcy like typical common stock shareholders.
It's a $725M minimum valuation. Not an $11B market cap - as it would be for a public company.
But it still affects founders and employees outcome, isn't it?
The options strike price is usually dictated by the last round valuation - this may mean that in a possible IPO in the future many employees will find they made close to nothing
The options strike price is usually dictated by the last round valuation - this may mean that in a possible IPO in the future many employees will find they made close to nothing
I’m waiting for Postman news to drop. Got into a discussion with one of their recruiters in 2021 about their absurd valuation, and boy did he try to spin a tale
Wow, jesus, $6.5B [1] for an API client? 2021 really was a fever dream for VC, huh.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-value...
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-value...
Might I introduce you to Calendly[1], a $3bn meeting-scheduling app, that employs >500 people.
Personally, I see these kinds of things as a failing of the US's macroeconomic policy since 2010 first (ZIRP), and the failing of the board and VCs second, before dicing up the blame amongst c-suite and executives. The incentive structures start from the top.
[1]: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/calendly
Personally, I see these kinds of things as a failing of the US's macroeconomic policy since 2010 first (ZIRP), and the failing of the board and VCs second, before dicing up the blame amongst c-suite and executives. The incentive structures start from the top.
[1]: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/calendly
Honestly, even Calendly makes more sense to me.
Massive addressable market, pretty mediocre state of the art, problem that people already spend real money to solve (poorly). $3B is high, but I can see a world where it’s justified.
Employee count seems high but I would imagine a disproportionate number are sales/marketing because, again, addressable market is huge and competition is fierce.
Postman… the addressable market is just not that large, especially for the features you actually pay for.
Massive addressable market, pretty mediocre state of the art, problem that people already spend real money to solve (poorly). $3B is high, but I can see a world where it’s justified.
Employee count seems high but I would imagine a disproportionate number are sales/marketing because, again, addressable market is huge and competition is fierce.
Postman… the addressable market is just not that large, especially for the features you actually pay for.
Apparently it's 155 engineers (if LI data is to be believed), and about an equal amount of Sales employees [0].
There's definitely value in the space, but I struggle to imagine how the ends (capturing that value) justifies the means (how they're pursuing that value).
If you know your way around CalDAV [1], you can build the most valuable 20% of their features in a weekend. A team of 3-4 could build the most valuable 80% in a month or two. In fact, some people have not only done that but kept going, and we have FOSS tools like https://cal.com as a result, that are arguably easier to use.
As a board member/founder/executive, one has to in the mirror each night, and feel confident saying "I'm running this company responsibly".
Especially if you're working in a purely digital space (which Calendly is), you have to bend really far to justify hiring that many people. IDK, maybe I'm a standard deviation or two away from norms on frugality, but this baffles me.
[0]: To contrast, WhatsApp sold in (!) 2014 (!) with 32 engineers (~50 total heacount), servicing 450mm active users. So, Calendly have 10x the headcount, on .2x the valuation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV
There's definitely value in the space, but I struggle to imagine how the ends (capturing that value) justifies the means (how they're pursuing that value).
If you know your way around CalDAV [1], you can build the most valuable 20% of their features in a weekend. A team of 3-4 could build the most valuable 80% in a month or two. In fact, some people have not only done that but kept going, and we have FOSS tools like https://cal.com as a result, that are arguably easier to use.
As a board member/founder/executive, one has to in the mirror each night, and feel confident saying "I'm running this company responsibly".
Especially if you're working in a purely digital space (which Calendly is), you have to bend really far to justify hiring that many people. IDK, maybe I'm a standard deviation or two away from norms on frugality, but this baffles me.
[0]: To contrast, WhatsApp sold in (!) 2014 (!) with 32 engineers (~50 total heacount), servicing 450mm active users. So, Calendly have 10x the headcount, on .2x the valuation.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV
I get sent calendly links all the time by recruiters on LinkedIn, no idea what their economics look like but I can see a $3bn valuation being totally reasonable since they are directly enabling a profit center (for external recruiters) and critical business function for both 3rd and 1st party recruiters.
If calendly links improve the top-of-the-funnel size by X% it would be very easy to justify paying them large amounts of money to do so. If I’m employing 50 recruiters why wouldn’t I pay calendly $100k/year or more to make them X% more effective?
You could argue for building your own, but it doesn’t make sense for every business to build their own, and I think it’s obviously the type of tool where a prototype would be easy to make but getting enterprise-ready would be challenging.
If calendly links improve the top-of-the-funnel size by X% it would be very easy to justify paying them large amounts of money to do so. If I’m employing 50 recruiters why wouldn’t I pay calendly $100k/year or more to make them X% more effective?
You could argue for building your own, but it doesn’t make sense for every business to build their own, and I think it’s obviously the type of tool where a prototype would be easy to make but getting enterprise-ready would be challenging.
Its the same flawed analysis people use for many of the tech or story stocks.
In practice if calendly gets a large share of the market and really can charge 100k/customer, competitors will pop up quickly and force pricing far lower.
For a long while many tech companies had no serious competition as startups stayed in their own lane, but thats no longer true.
E.g. people were saying the same things about Zoom and Slack, but now they’re a dime a dozen.
Amazon just launched a tiktok clone. Nothing is safe from competition, so dont expect outsized margins to last forever in your forecasts. First movers get a few years of runway before profitability will be pressured
In practice if calendly gets a large share of the market and really can charge 100k/customer, competitors will pop up quickly and force pricing far lower.
For a long while many tech companies had no serious competition as startups stayed in their own lane, but thats no longer true.
E.g. people were saying the same things about Zoom and Slack, but now they’re a dime a dozen.
Amazon just launched a tiktok clone. Nothing is safe from competition, so dont expect outsized margins to last forever in your forecasts. First movers get a few years of runway before profitability will be pressured
I have no idea what calendly’s financials and growth look like and can’t say whether the valuation is reasonable, I just think they have a solid product that definitely adds value in a way that you can easily attribute to revenue or important hiring metrics.
Sure, every company has competitors. That doesn’t mean $3b is an unreasonable valuation.
Sure, every company has competitors. That doesn’t mean $3b is an unreasonable valuation.
$3B may definitely be reasonable depending on the numbers.
Just commenting on the apparent assumptions made using the analysis above. Zoom is still worth $20B, but there were many who said it was worth far higher because they didn't consider or discount competition at all.
However, I also think Zoom is likely to fall quite a bit more from here. Their revenue is flat YoY and still valued at 30 PE.
Just commenting on the apparent assumptions made using the analysis above. Zoom is still worth $20B, but there were many who said it was worth far higher because they didn't consider or discount competition at all.
However, I also think Zoom is likely to fall quite a bit more from here. Their revenue is flat YoY and still valued at 30 PE.
Nothing is safe from competition, but I'd say Amazon making a TikTok clone is more of an instance of sticking a trendy social feature in where it doesn't belong than a true threat. It's the same driving force that led all of the companies, including the likes of LinkedIn and Pinterest, to introduce Snapchat-type Stories a couple of years ago.
If memory serves Bezos knew Amazon had about 5 years before the competition caught up. That's why he started AWS.
Calendly is nearly ubiquitous when scheduling meetings with people outside your office these days. They’re particularly useful in sales and product. Given the space their in and the market cap they have 3b seems in the ballpark. Of course I don’t know what their numbers look like but if they’re doing 300m revenue yearly it would line up…
Not seen it that much, so I might be missing something, but to me it also looks to be in the "could be a feature" category. I.e. if Microsoft adds a similar feature that vaguely comes close to Office 365 it'll be a lot harder to justify.
Calendly is a good product. But I don't believe it has moat or a unique offering.
Identical competitors is popping up easily by offering the exact same service. It is a simple concept and the fact is that the only innovation they can add is adding very simple bells and whistles. The barier to this industry is virtually non existing.
Nothing is stopping Google or Microsoft to build their own integrated calendly like app. Considering platform risks, I don't believe any SAAS whose core offering relies on external API to have a sustainable revenue model.
Identical competitors is popping up easily by offering the exact same service. It is a simple concept and the fact is that the only innovation they can add is adding very simple bells and whistles. The barier to this industry is virtually non existing.
Nothing is stopping Google or Microsoft to build their own integrated calendly like app. Considering platform risks, I don't believe any SAAS whose core offering relies on external API to have a sustainable revenue model.
Microsoft has built one too (Bookings). I think it sucks and I'm a Microsoft fanboy.
> Microsoft fanboy
What is your opinion about Microsoft Teams?
What is your opinion about Microsoft Teams?
I think it's fine. Slack seems a little better, for instance I like their threading more. But I like how well Teams is integrated into our Azure Active Directory infrastructure.
You truly are a microsoft fan :)
I have done couple of gigs for a Azure shops. It is borderline admirable how one client vehemently adhered to the MS teams. Even to the point of using Teams integrated Onenote for software design. Everything that was supposed to be written went to onenote on teams.
I have done couple of gigs for a Azure shops. It is borderline admirable how one client vehemently adhered to the MS teams. Even to the point of using Teams integrated Onenote for software design. Everything that was supposed to be written went to onenote on teams.
Google already has one
Every time I read employee numbers like that for a SaaS business, I can’t help but wonder… what do all those developers actually do all day?
I wonder if a large portion of their valuation isn't based on the data rather than the product? (Would allow you to get signal on when [your] employees are interviewing elsewhere, etc. given the name, phone number and/or email address that you provide to Calendly)
VC was cheap after '08 with quantitative easing. Maybe they thought, hey, cheap capital.
They do other things.
They just don’t do them well enough for adoption.
They just don’t do them well enough for adoption.
It's useful. But the pro features didn't really stand out that much. I worked at one company that shelled out for pro and then went back because really the pro features weren't that much use.
Well more than anything, 90% of the use cases are people using it as essentially a GUI CURL. There's countless open source alternatives [1] [2]. They can't ever charge too much money because the space isn't exactly hard to enter.
[1] https://github.com/Kong/insomnia [2] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox
[1] https://github.com/Kong/insomnia [2] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox
See you in 15 years when the next boom cycle starts.
It’s a very good one though. It just removes a lot of friction that alternatives impose to you.
What friction does curl impose? I get that a CLI command isn't suitable for everyone, but (1) we are talking about a developer audience and (2) there should NOT be a $5.6 billion valuation gap between the two tools.
All seriousness. Curl should be a billion dollar piece of software. It's so widely used, I suspect half of the apps I use on a daily basis would probably stop working if Curl was removed.
No kidding look at this list: https://curl.se/docs/companies.html
Not only that, the author has to deal with angry e-mails from people who are unhappy with their Toyota Corolla: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/11/14/i-have-toyota-corola/
Compensation for FOSS engineers is so broken. So much economic value gets created and rarely any of it is captured by the creators. It’s infuriating.
The way Postman is moving hasn't struck me as a developer audience anymore. At my last job we heavily used it for the QA and support teams. Most devs used the vscode extension that does mostly the same things without all the cloud-sharing junk.
Have you heard about Docusign ?
Holy crap postman is valued at 5.6 billion?
I... thought it was someone's hobby project. Maybe something ran by a tiny team.
Why did they even take funding? Surely making a profit from the get go wasn't a challenge for them? It isn't like there is some huge growth opportunity for them outside of "gain more customers", and pretty much every developer in the world has known who they are for ages now.
I... thought it was someone's hobby project. Maybe something ran by a tiny team.
Why did they even take funding? Surely making a profit from the get go wasn't a challenge for them? It isn't like there is some huge growth opportunity for them outside of "gain more customers", and pretty much every developer in the world has known who they are for ages now.
Their enterprise pricing is $99 per user, per month. Wow.
About a half hour of a developers time per month.
I mean why not take funding, pay yourself $400k a year to "CEO" it, sell equity at a crazy price in the B round, etc. etc.
They'll eventually go out of business, heavily downsize, or pivot away from being accessible to non-corporate users. We'll bemoan their loss, and a lightweight competitor will rise up a few years later that is made by a tiny team who has the huge advantage of knowing what they are building.
I am sure postman is one of those products where 90% of the common features are super easy to replicate, and the last 10% take 80% of the dev org to work on.
I am sure postman is one of those products where 90% of the common features are super easy to replicate, and the last 10% take 80% of the dev org to work on.
I don't mean for this to put down the Postman team and their hard work, but I don't understand what its fit is.
If I'm writing an API, I'm testing that thing as I work on it, and the tests describe the spec of the API along with any public-facing documentation. I'm also going to provide a nice interface for testing it manually, because there are plenty of tools for doing so.
At this point, what does my team gain from using a GUI to interact with the API? Is it better documentation, better accessibility to less experienced devs?
I admit I'm naive, I'm probably missing a killer feature. I don't feel like I have an API problem though. They work well, they're tested, easy to use, directory structure/conventions/tests provide good discoverability, docs exist where code falls short, etc.
What cool stuff am I missing?
If I'm writing an API, I'm testing that thing as I work on it, and the tests describe the spec of the API along with any public-facing documentation. I'm also going to provide a nice interface for testing it manually, because there are plenty of tools for doing so.
At this point, what does my team gain from using a GUI to interact with the API? Is it better documentation, better accessibility to less experienced devs?
I admit I'm naive, I'm probably missing a killer feature. I don't feel like I have an API problem though. They work well, they're tested, easy to use, directory structure/conventions/tests provide good discoverability, docs exist where code falls short, etc.
What cool stuff am I missing?
lol
crazy bubble bursting
postman was good, now its awful. luckily there are other hobby projects that are still enjoyable to use
postman was good, now its awful. luckily there are other hobby projects that are still enjoyable to use
You mean post.news ?
Is it though? I'm not a VC but $142m (questionable source) [1] at 100% growth YoY [2] seems like it could make the valuation reasonable.
It's critical infrastructure for a lot of Ecommerce companies.
[1] https://getlatka.com/companies/airtable
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/airtable-layoffs/
It's critical infrastructure for a lot of Ecommerce companies.
[1] https://getlatka.com/companies/airtable
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/08/airtable-layoffs/
That does seem nuts. Quickbase, who've made quite a lot of inroads with big companies, was bought in 2019 for approximately $1B.
[deleted]
What is/was their revenue and growth rate?
so now layoffs.fyi which is using Airtable can have a row with Airtable layoff record inside an Airtable table component.
It's the first row on their homepage now.
Last time I was looking for a job I used Airtable to track all of the companies I was interested in, applications I made, interviews, and points of contact. It was a really nice experience.
If you worked at Airtable, thank you for making a cool product. I hope it helps you in your job searches too!
If you worked at Airtable, thank you for making a cool product. I hope it helps you in your job searches too!
They yanked the “memo” on how to use airtable to look for a job, I’m getting 404: https://www.airtable.com/newsroom/company/widespread-layoffs...
Also, pivoting to enterprise worries me as a end user who likes their free plan
Also, pivoting to enterprise worries me as a end user who likes their free plan
I am actually surprised at how correlated layoffs have been across the industry. Is there a decaunicorn that went against the grain and did not accelerate hiring in the prior 2 years?
You're only hearing about layoffs from the companies doing layoffs. Companies like Apple haven't done layoffs.
But the answer is mostly no. You don't become a worth $10Bn+ by being slow and steady. You grow fast when money is cheap and you hibernate when money is tight. (I don't agree with this way of building a company, but that's not the point.)
But the answer is mostly no. You don't become a worth $10Bn+ by being slow and steady. You grow fast when money is cheap and you hibernate when money is tight. (I don't agree with this way of building a company, but that's not the point.)
It's a weird game theory thing.
In a market with any amount of stickiness (arguable most tech markets), losing share is a permanent problem. Every customer your competitor acquires is theirs for as long as the stickiness holds, and if you want to woo them, not only do you have to convince them you're worth trying, but that you're worth switching for.
So under the all my competitors big and small are being aggressive and fighting for share framework, most companies bit the bullet and decided to accelerate hiring (especially since, as we are seeing now, it's so easy to reverse that decision for top management).
It's an argument for why the overall economy has become less volatile as growth has slowed, but the high growth pockets (like tech) are more volatile than ever.
In a market with any amount of stickiness (arguable most tech markets), losing share is a permanent problem. Every customer your competitor acquires is theirs for as long as the stickiness holds, and if you want to woo them, not only do you have to convince them you're worth trying, but that you're worth switching for.
So under the all my competitors big and small are being aggressive and fighting for share framework, most companies bit the bullet and decided to accelerate hiring (especially since, as we are seeing now, it's so easy to reverse that decision for top management).
It's an argument for why the overall economy has become less volatile as growth has slowed, but the high growth pockets (like tech) are more volatile than ever.
Sundar Pichai went on a big media tour saying it was time for tech layoffs. Investors on wall street think he knows what he's talking about so they went around to all the board meetings and VCs saying "Google is cutting costs, we need to be doing the same at our companies". You won't be able to raise money or look good on wall street if you don't look "fiscally responsible" right now and that means "making the hard choice to let people go". Nevermind that it's actually easier to let people go than to fight with the board who's been listing to Pichai quotes on MSNBC for the last few months.
Interest rates rose above effectively-0% for everyone at the same time.
Whether these companies can only survive in a 0% environment is a matter for debate I won't get into; my main point here is more along the line that there had to be consequences to that somewhere. The rate of resources flying around reduces, the rate of resource consumption must reduce.
Whether these companies can only survive in a 0% environment is a matter for debate I won't get into; my main point here is more along the line that there had to be consequences to that somewhere. The rate of resources flying around reduces, the rate of resource consumption must reduce.
When layoffs are common, a new one isn't news. It's a great time for companies to offload unproductive employees. If they did layoffs during a bull market it'd draw a lot of attention and negative PR.
> I am actually surprised at how correlated layoffs have been across the industry.
Given one a16z VC gloating about it and praising Musk's "sack everyone and work the rest to death", I wouldn't be surprised if it's the billionaires co-ordinating.
It's not as though suppressing workers is new, and SV got co-ordinating their efforts to crush salaries.
Given one a16z VC gloating about it and praising Musk's "sack everyone and work the rest to death", I wouldn't be surprised if it's the billionaires co-ordinating.
It's not as though suppressing workers is new, and SV got co-ordinating their efforts to crush salaries.
Nice that the tech industry finally finds out how the rest of the economy functions.
founder friendly != employee friendly
To be fair, everyone I know at a16z is devoted to free speech and they're excited about the opportunity to expand the user base by opening up the echo chamber.
And it's important to put the "work the rest to death" thing in context. In the past, Twitter workers were secretly video taped bragging about only working four hours per week.
https://www.tellmebest.com/twitter-communists-employee-leake...
And it's important to put the "work the rest to death" thing in context. In the past, Twitter workers were secretly video taped bragging about only working four hours per week.
https://www.tellmebest.com/twitter-communists-employee-leake...
Company sets a mature hiring strategy and continues to employ previous hires doesn’t make the news.
Or maybe “mature” is an uncalled for judgement. Company correctly forecasts hiring needs and business environment is maybe more correct.
Or maybe “mature” is an uncalled for judgement. Company correctly forecasts hiring needs and business environment is maybe more correct.
From: <Insert VC Firm>
Subject: How and why to contemplate layoffs in Q4 2022
Subject: How and why to contemplate layoffs in Q4 2022
Their investors are either literally the same people, or subject to the same herd mentality.
FTX
The previous Chief Product Officer has a great background in consumer products... which is at odds with Airtable's focus on Enterprise SaaS.
I heard second-hand that Airtable was paying far over-market rates to hire engineers last year.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/airtable/salaries/software-...
Median engineer was making $370k (of course half of that is pre-ipo RSUs)
Median engineer was making $370k (of course half of that is pre-ipo RSUs)
That seems about right if they were trying to compete against FAANG for low-mid range engineers. I think FAANG pays more, but this doesn't seem like an absurd comp number for 4-6 YOE.
If you value equity in any non public company at $0 as I do and it’s true that only half the compensation was in cash, the $185K is far less than a mid range engineer at any FAANG
Okay, but if you are going to make that comparison, then why bother comparing trillion dollar profitable companies with a startup. The goal is to make people whole on paper. If you don't think that is appropriate for your needs, you don't have to apply or join!
I care about my compensation. I know working for a public company, every six months I get RSUs deposited in my brokerage account that I can (and do) immediately sell and diversify.
How am I “made whole” by illiquid equity?
In the case of a private company, I have no guarantee that my equity will ever be worth anything and I have to wait until an exit event.
Yes I know that there are ways to sell options in private company if your company allows it and if there is a market for it. This again is unlike logging into Fidelity and selling my stocks the day they vest.
How am I “made whole” by illiquid equity?
In the case of a private company, I have no guarantee that my equity will ever be worth anything and I have to wait until an exit event.
Yes I know that there are ways to sell options in private company if your company allows it and if there is a market for it. This again is unlike logging into Fidelity and selling my stocks the day they vest.
[deleted]
I wonder what their headcount was pre-pandemic. To me, it feels like companies that did well for the past 3 years have reduced their staff to 2019 levels
Lots of companies doing mass layoffs have barely even gone back to their 2020 headcount. The pandemic was a wild period of overhiring for all of tech.
Before this week, I had not heard of no-code. Now I see it all the time, at least 3 different occassions. Weird
It's just the buzzword that's (relatively) new. The most famous skeptical comment about the movement came from a guy who died in 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Perlis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Perlis
what was the comment?
I'm guessing they are referring to
> When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
> When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html
I just wanted to say that I used AirTable recently to organize some complicated, but business-facing data, and it was awesome. I highly recommend it.
How big was the data?
sad.
i wonder if the layoffs are going to go beyond tech.
retail is next, for sure.
thoughts? people keep saying we won't have a big recession because tech is the ONLY sector that will have layoffs. I am doubtful of that statement.
thoughts? people keep saying we won't have a big recession because tech is the ONLY sector that will have layoffs. I am doubtful of that statement.
Why would retail have layoffs? It’s not like stores are over staffed, at least any of the ones I frequent. If anything they are super understaffed.
I mean I assume that retail is about as close to the bone as food service is currently, meaning there just isn't really anything to cut.
The housing market is also seeing a downturn.
Interest rates have gone up substantially this year, and companies in that sector are definitely feeling the burn.
Interest rates have gone up substantially this year, and companies in that sector are definitely feeling the burn.
Is notion eating their lunch?
Notion is very substandard in what it does to compete with airtable, or in other words, they do not compete at all.
Airtable is spreadsheets on steroids.
And notion has tables.
I haven't used Notion for 2 years, but in the many years preceding I did use it. It was extremely slow for large projects. The company I was with left to use Slite instead and it was worse. It was a major head scratcher. I don't know why they were slow or why their lunch hasn't been eaten by someone making a much faster, more capable, fluid experience. I imagine it's pretty hard. Even so, we found the experience way too frustrating to pay for it.
Thanks for sharing! What was inferior about Slite (and when did you use it)?
I’m working on it, would love to hear your takes, especially as in term of performance and speed we worked heavily this year and believe to have reached something superior to alternatives.
I’m working on it, would love to hear your takes, especially as in term of performance and speed we worked heavily this year and believe to have reached something superior to alternatives.
I used it about 1.5 years ago.
I wish I had access to the issues I was going back and forth with your team on, but I no longer have access to that email account.
One big thing we wanted was relationships. Perhaps we’d keep data in a table and some entries would link to another document. At the time, this wasn’t possible but I was told it was on the horizon/being considered.
Otherwise we had issues with performance slow downs when we allowed documents to get very large. This was generally bearable, but we had some documents we didn’t want to break apart (for reasons), and opening them up became a little frustrating. They didn’t scroll well and editing them was laggy, for example.
I trust your team has been working hard on it because it was very evident that the team cared a lot and was super attentive. I constantly worried I was being annoying, but I got quick, steady, and very gracious responses, always looking to provide useful information. Super positive experience in that regard!
I wish I had access to the issues I was going back and forth with your team on, but I no longer have access to that email account.
One big thing we wanted was relationships. Perhaps we’d keep data in a table and some entries would link to another document. At the time, this wasn’t possible but I was told it was on the horizon/being considered.
Otherwise we had issues with performance slow downs when we allowed documents to get very large. This was generally bearable, but we had some documents we didn’t want to break apart (for reasons), and opening them up became a little frustrating. They didn’t scroll well and editing them was laggy, for example.
I trust your team has been working hard on it because it was very evident that the team cared a lot and was super attentive. I constantly worried I was being annoying, but I got quick, steady, and very gracious responses, always looking to provide useful information. Super positive experience in that regard!
I can't edit this now, but it just occurred to me that the relational data issue was specific to Slite, not Notion. Racking my brain, I'm fairly sure the issue we had most with Notion was performance.
Super clear and useful!
The performance definitely is something we improved a lot, and indeed relational data - I guess you mean roll ups in database- is not something we allow at the moment, thanks for sharing again!
The performance definitely is something we improved a lot, and indeed relational data - I guess you mean roll ups in database- is not something we allow at the moment, thanks for sharing again!
Definitely not. Different products.
PD.pub is hiring! All your work will be public domain.
I am a huge fan of AirTable, but obviously think they've missed something huge: (see my talk "If spreadsheets and programming languages had a baby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l2QWH-iV3k). We've got lots of exciting stuff coming out!
I am a huge fan of AirTable, but obviously think they've missed something huge: (see my talk "If spreadsheets and programming languages had a baby" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l2QWH-iV3k). We've got lots of exciting stuff coming out!
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I find Smartsheet to be a superior platform.
That's gotta be a little worrying, huh?
Also, in the article, it mentions that "20% of staff were affected". That puts Airtable at ~1250 employees (pre-layoff). They raised $725 million in 2021. So this can't possibly be a cash crunch, right? Feels more like opportunistic restructuring - a chance to make some painful changes with the justification of "the economy."