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Airtable

Power Score: 55.78

Momentum Score: 82.4 (1)

HQ: San Francisco, CA

CEO: Howie Liu

On Power

In 2012, you could use Airtable to build a personal calendar; ten years later, you could probably use it to run a good chunk of a business. What began a decade ago as a reinvention of the Excel spreadsheet has become a low-code powerhouse, in part due to how the company has leveraged its foundational spreadsheet platform and accessible UX to target a larger chunk of businesses by adding features that appealed to technical and non-technical audiences alike. Today, enterprises can quickly create customizable applications using Airtable’s low-code and no-code tooling, and the company has attracted customers from more than 250,000 organizations who are seeking to streamline their work and minimize development time. Airtable’s remote productivity tools have been further boosted by the shift to remote work during the pandemic, and the company was recently valued at more than $11 billion in December , nearly double its valuation in 2020.

On Disruption

Airtable introduced a new “interface designer” in November, a no-code drag-and-drop application building tool the company claims will move it beyond its spreadsheet origins to a broader set of enterprise application building capabilities. It’s not the only company doubling down on visuals, but it’s still a significant shift, albeit one that falls in line with CEO Howie Liu’s belief that the “knowledge worker tool stack” is being separated into different layers. Airtable also acqui-hired Walrus.ai’s employees in late 2021, who were previously focused on making it easier for developers to write end-to-end software tests in English rather than code. While Airtable doesn’t plan on using walrus.ai’s software within its platform, the company’s general mission fits nicely with Airtable’s plan to reduce the barriers to software development by minimizing the amount of coding developers have to do.

Tea Leaves

Following the company’s most-recent $735 million mega-round in December, speculative eyes have begun zeroing in on Airtable as a major IPO candidate. Following the funding announcement, Liu noted that there was no specific timeline for the company going public. But it’s not the first time the company has been rumored to be considering a public offering; speculation swirled following the company’s 2020 series D funding round, when Liu denied that it was something in the near future, and again when the company hired CFO Ambereen Toubassy in late 2020. So don’t hold your breath for a 2022 IPO.

They Said It

“The pace of growth in the space and also the appetite from an investment and customer standpoint has just massively accelerated. So it's gone from what Geoffrey Moore would call the chasm of adoption — where it was really just slow, early adopters who were coming in — to now, where we're entering the tornado phase. The category is valid, people understand, ‘I need a product like this.’ And it's a land grab.” – CEO Howie Liu in a November 2021 interview with Protocol .

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