Why I think Airtable is the most fascinating company/product in the world.
Airtable to me is the most fascinating company/product in the world and I believe it gives us a glimpse into the future of software development.
They currently market themselves as a collaboration tool, something in the realm of Notion, Monday, etc. I think this is honestly good marketing because it is easy for the market and customers to digest, as it disarms the user (because this is a concept they know of). Additionally, I believe that most users use it like a simple database management system. But I think it is more than that. This also works from a user acquisition and retention lens; for the most part, Airtable is a Product-led growth company. So, they use clever messaging to encourage people to acquire or try out the product. If there’s more to the product, users will discover its full capabilities as they use it.
Back to the matter.
Airtable is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and it gives us a glimpse into the future of software development. I have heard them speak about the product as an application builder, so there is reason to believe that this is what the people at airtable really believe that the product is.
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. — Wikipedia
Fundamentally most visual applications are a database, a set of code/logic in the middle layer that controls what is seen on the front-end, the visual interface. Airtable does all these things without you having to write a single line of code. It’s like having a photoshop-y visual canvas but for building software as opposed to editing pictures.
A visual will help cement this idea. Remember the 3 components of visual applications: database, code/logic and a visual interface. Let’s see how this works in the Airtable product.
- Database: This is usually the starting point when you interact with the product, understandably so because this is truly where the products main innovation (of many) lies. Traditionally, you will have to use SQL or other languages to code a database (especially relational) but in Airtable you can do this in a good ‘ol spreadsheet
2. Code/Logic: In the product the automations feature allows you to write logic (traditionally done with code) in a visual way to run some operations that modifies the data in the database. I won’t go into too much detail here, this is not a tutorial. You can even write conditional logic (if else statements) in traditional code.
3. Visual Interface: You can display any subset of data from the database (modified or not) in the Interface feature. You can also take action and modify the contents of the database from this interface, similar to how when you post or delete a picture from Instagram it modifies the Instagram database. This is what separates this feature from a dashboard/ data visualization platform like Tableau.
I do not believe Airtable is the perfect product but I believe this is the future of how computer programs are made as it breaks down barriers to making programs. Think about it the main skill of computer programmers is their problem solving skills, the syntax is their MOAT. I wrote my BiVC fellowship Investment Thesis on this concept, I named it Developer Tools 2.0. The thesis will have its own article. COMING SOON! ANTICIPATE!
Back to Airtable and Product/Business Strategy. Depending on if Airtable can offer more flexibility especially on interfaces. It has an opportunity to be the VS Code of the new paradigm of software development.
