Founder of Airtable here--we did look at Lotus Notes as an interesting historical precedent, though of course we've also invented from scratch in many cases, and being web-based and collaborative by default is a huge wedge for us in terms of adoption virality. I admit I'm too young to have used Lotus Notes but we did buy an old Lotus Notes guidebook, as well as looked up old Infoworld and other magazine articles (Google Books indexes those magazines!) about Notes, dBase, and other products in the genre : ).
It was way, way ahead of its time. It was really the very first system that integrated the concept or networking, users, groups, a replicated database, nosql unstructured data, form building and in built security with a sophisticated GUI.
I hated it because it was hard to get data out of it and no way as a user to automate tasks.
I think it was great if you had departmental developers building stuff, but I hated not being able to make my own forms. And I hated having to open up Notes in 2010 to click a procurement button or a timesheet button. If it was web-based (or had an api) I could have just scripted requests to do the same thing.
Maybe more proof that there's nothing new under the sun. I remember looking at this space and how so much was inspired by 80s tools like FileMaker and Hypercard.
thank you. You have a great product there. I'm sure a lot of design/film production studios were looking for this. Right now managing a design studio usually means 3/4 platforms. Your platform has a real chance to take over that field.
If I can offer a suggestion, take a look into ftrack and try to copy some of their core featureset (unless maybe you can already do that, in which case just make a template! ).
Founder of Airtable here--Airtable is actually a relational database with foreign key relationships (the technicalities of which are abstracted away from the user). It's designed specifically to be somewhere between the accessibility of a spreadsheet and the customizability/structure of a Filemaker/Access/Force.com, all with a much more modern UX and collaboration experience. Airtable.com/product or Airtable.com/templates offers some more context!
Thank you for Airtable, I'm a big fan, especially of the Zapier integration. Lately there has been a lot of discussion on Hacker News about projects like Opps Daily [1] and Nugget [2], where people write in about some pain point they have in their daily job that might be solved by custom-built software. I get the impression that Airtable + Zapier could solve a lot of those use cases.
Airtable looks like exactly what the world needs for a modern system to let everyday users manage data well rather than bunging it all in a spreadsheet.
But the row limits are too low for many obvious uses. I assume this is for technical reasons? Otherwise it doesn't make much sense that if you pay for 20 users to share a database you get the same number of rows as if you pay for two.
1) Foreign keys to users (for e.g. "assigned to", "team members")
2) Better programmability - right now, anything moderately complex requires a bunch of intermediate column (that then have to be hidden from all views). Objective spreadsheets (MIT SAIL) seems like something to aim for.
3) Programmatic (API) access to row history - at least read, for reports
In addition to native mobile apps, we do have a desktop app. It does require internet connectivity though (similar to Slack's app, it's built on electron). Airtable.com/downloads
Could you spend a couple of minutes to describe the advantages of Airtable over Fieldbook or Ragic? I've been gripped by indecision regarding which tool to use, and hence use none of them.
Fieldbook co-founder here, thought I would weigh in. I agree with Howie that he doesn't spend much time using Fieldbook, since we already have many of the features he mentioned.
IMHO Fieldbook has the best user experience anywhere for building and working with a real relational data model, including many-to-many relationships, sophisticated queries, and aggregated reports. We've done a ton of iteration with real users and hundreds of usability tests to make these features natural and intuitive.
But there's no need to be gripped by indecision! Just try them both, it's free. That will tell you which one works best for you. Message us in-app if you have any questions, we're happy to help you get set up!
It seems cool. Have you consider letting us trying the demo without asking for credential? The login form have stop me since I do not want to be contacted by your sales.
I had heard of airtable and checked it out and thought: this is exactly what I have needed this whole time. It is a much slicker version of SmartSheet.
And then I just found out about Fieldbook through your comment and it looks really good too. It's the only other product I've seen that is in the ballpark.
And then both founders are right here on HN pointing out more features.
To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time using Fieldbook or Ragic. That being said, we spend an insane amount of time/effort making sure that Airtable delivers a first-class product experience. In fact, the first couple years of Airtable's existence involved myself and my cofounder Andrew--who previously PMed the redesign of Google Maps--building countless prototype variants to get the UX right, doing a literal hundred user studies with people from all sorts of industries/roles to understand how the full range of how they used spreadsheets, databases, and other products, and researching the prior art by talking to the creators of past products in the space (i.e. MS Access, Excel, Coghead, Podio, Dabbledb, etc).
We think Airtable is to spreadsheets/Access/Filemaker what Slack is to email (and fwiw, Slack itself uses Airtable http://bit.ly/2m58l4U ).
Specifically, our product offers the following (which to my knowledge Ragic/Fieldbook do not):
x IMO a much more intuitive design
x Native Android, iPhone, & iPad apps, as well as an electron desktop app ( airtable.com/downloads )
x Ability to create multiple views on the same table, each of which preserves its own filter/sort/visibility settings
Multiple view types, including grid, grouped records, calendar, kanban, public forms, and gallery: http://bit.ly/2ky3WLB .
x Inline collaboration i.e. @mentions in text fields, record-level comments
x Many more useful field types
x Visual revision history and snapshots
x More integrations, such as with Zapier (see Zapier's writeups http://bit.ly/2lfGr79http://bit.ly/2l3dZqG ), Slack, native calendars via an iCal feed, and Dropbox/Box/Gdrive/Evernote.
x Greater capacity and smoother performance.
x Full realtime sync for all changes, including schema modifications.
x Lots of little things, like the ability to perform date calculations relative to today (i.e. a filtered view or formula that shows all projects due within 7 days from today and is automatically updated as time goes by), private share-links and embeds to give people access to a read-only view of Airtable without making them sign up for an account, inline document previews (e.g. view a text-copyable inline version of a .DOCX file)
Over 30,000 organizations already use Airtable--this includes tech cos like Airbnb, Box, Wework, and Tesla; non-tech cos like Atlantic Records and Penguin Randomhouse; educational institutions like CMU, Rice, and Stanford. We're growing our team and continuously releasing new enhancements to improve the product experience for all users.
I've amended the guide to more strongly recommend the reader consult with a startup attorney, even if they plan on filing the paperwork themselves to reduce costs. FWIW, I actually had stronger wording in an earlier draft of my guide, but somehow it got lost in subsequent revisions :(.
Under the section for "When should I use a lawyer", I added the below (I also introduced "Finding a lawyer" as the first step of the Delaware corp checklist tab):
Though the formation documents are sometimes similar, mistakes can be made easily and are often costly (or impossible) to later remedy. I strongly recommend consulting with a startup attorney to provide guidance throughout the process and review important documents before you finalize them, even if you wish to file most of the incorporation paperwork yourself to reduce legal costs. Many startup lawyers will even do the basic incorporation for free of labor charge (passing through only the filing fees directly to you) in the interest of gaining your business as a long-term client down the road. Other lawyers will also/alternatively allow you to defer payment for legal work (up to a certain maximum, sometimes as high as the $10k range) until you've raised funding.
Author here, for the sake of constructive criticism, would love to hear why you don't find it useful?
The disclaimer is there because, while I tried my best to make sure all info in the guide is accurate, I don't think it's fair or necessary for me to take on legal liability if someone makes (or claims to make) a mistake by using this (free) guide. I certainly hope readers do not interpret this guide as a definitive and comprehensive substitute for proper legal counsel and research of their own--rather, it contains information which is designed to act as a supplement to those things.
In other words, it will hopefully help folks avoid false negatives in legal steps (i.e. forgot to file an 83b within 30 days or register with their city's business department), expose them to lesser-known alternatives that their own lawyers may not have told them about (using FF preferred stock to provide a small measure of founder liquidity down the road without skewing 409A valuations), and understand why it's necessary to do certain things (like adopt bylaws, file a Form D, etc).
The scope of the guide is strongly biased towards U.S. startups incorporating as a Delaware corp (a common approach, even for companies not based in Delaware itself).
Why don't I find it useful? "Find legal counsel" and "Comply with State-Specific Regulations" are actual line items on your checklist. Your checklist can be reduced to one line item: hire someone who knows what they're doing.
It wouldn't bother me if you were simply sharing your experience in setting up a company, but this article is presented as advice wrapped in a thinly-veiled promotion of your product (and some lawyers/law firms).
Agreed with rpgmaker. My experience with the law (IANAL) is that it's sometimes just easier to pull up the books, read the relevant portions yourself, then confirm it with your lawyer for some quick answers. This is what I was doing before having a lawyer and it worked just fine, but having a validation source saved me many, many hours. Simply a hiring a lawyer and somewhat blindly trusting them sounds like poor advice in itself. That said, in an attempt at CYA, please please please just use a damn lawyer.
I said: "hire someone who knows what they're doing". I didn't say "blindly trust someone who holds themselves out as an expert and don't do any homework yourself". In fact, you said you hired an expert to validate your findings, which is exactly consistent with my advice.
That's very unfair. The author took the time to share his knowledge about legal issues surrounding startups and, as is customary when legal matters are discussed, he provided a disclaimer to avoid personal liability but that doesn't mean the article is inaccurate. You won't find anyone offering free legal services on a Medium post.
As I said, I have no problem with a post about "here's what happened to me and how I dealt with it". In this case, the OP is promoting a web-based spreadsheet tool and essentially advertising for a number of lawyers and firms.
You can expand the long text cells by clicking the expansion arrows that appear in the top right corner of the cell. I would also highly recommend using the full-screen version rather than embed (by clicking "View Larger Version"): https://airtable.com/shrOQ3Gf4Hs3Gvvvc
I would also add that, while I'm certainly biased, there is benefit to making this a "cloneable" database that you can then use as a personal checklist, add notes, further attachments, etc which you wouldn't be able to do with a simple blog post, for instance.
For starters,
1) File attachments
2) Better mobile UI (Airtable's database records can be displayed as cards on touch devices, whereas a traditional spreadsheet is always a 2d grid).
3) Interactive fields like checkboxes, dropdowns, etc.
4) Ability to expand records into a form detail view for better readability of long text, etc.
