Airtable

Lenny's Podcast · Aug 31

How we restructured Airtable's entire org for AI | Howie Liu (co-founder and CEO)

Valued around $12 billion, with over $100 million in free cash flow. It reorganized into fast and slow thinking teams, made its agent the default way to do everything, and now has about half of product and engineering on AI. Its components act as a domain-specific language so the agent builds more reliable business apps.

Tips

• Split the org into fast thinking and slow thinking groups▶ 21:38Airtable's slow group built HyperDB, which handles multi-hundred-million record data sets, while the fast group ships AI features almost weekly.
• Ask how you would found the company today, AI native▶ 35:50Airtable concluded its no-code components give an agent a more reliable building kit than generating every app from raw code.
• Let agents assemble reliable primitives instead of generating everything from code▶ 37:40
• Start new AI features with vibes, then add evals▶ 1:04:35Airtable tested a crawler agent that compiles lists of entities by trying varied queries first, then found it worked best on people and companies with certain parameters.
• Cut standing one-on-ones and make meetings timely and insight driven▶ 16:40Half of Airtable's EPD org is now working on AI capabilities.
• Organize around missions and outcomes, not feature surface areas▶ 19:30
• Make the AI experience primary and show what the model can do▶ 28:00
• Let users try AI products themselves instead of telling them in decks▶ 30:00ChatGPT reached roughly 700 million weekly active users in under three years.
• Do not step away from the product details you love▶ 1:22:21

Lenny's Podcast · Jun 22

From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber: The quiet architect behind the world’s most popular products

Deng was Chief Product Officer there, where he built a growth team and set up the tension between growth and craft.

Tips

• Build a growth team early to make the whole product rigorous▶ 43:54Peter built a growth team first at Instagram, Uber, Airtable and ChatGPT; at Instagram nobody knew how many users there were until then.
• Give two people opposing charges: grow the product and guard craft▶ 47:50Peter set up this tension at Facebook, Instagram, Airtable and ChatGPT.

Lenny's Podcast · Feb 12

Mastering onboarding | Lauryn Isford (Head of Growth at Airtable)

Rebuilt onboarding with a guided wizard, personalization and ongoing education, lifting activation 20%. It uses week-four multi-user as its activation metric, moved its growth North Star from revenue to user growth, and shipped its form-copy feature without an A/B test.

Tips

• Replace generic tooltips with a guided wizard for complicated products▶ 18:00The guided onboarding wizard was the most impactful piece of a set of changes that together drove a 20% lift in activation rate.
• Pick an activation metric that only 5 to 15 percent of users reach▶ 25:55Airtable's team activation metric was week-four multi-user: more than one person on a team active and contributing to a workflow in the fourth week.
• Break your activation metric into its component steps▶ 27:40Airtable did this decomposition on week-four multi-user active right before rebuilding onboarding.
• Pair your activation North Star with retention and sophistication metrics▶ 29:10
• Segment onboarding by learning and building style, not job function▶ 21:43Learning-style and building-style segments gave better activation results than traditional role-based segments.
• Teach what users need on day one and defer advanced features▶ 20:06This was part of the work behind the 20% activation lift.
• Show what a feature does for the user instead of naming it▶ 46:04
• Do not push premium features in onboarding just because they monetize▶ 48:42
• Add guardrail metrics alongside your North Star▶ 50:03
• Use A/B tests as risk mitigation, not as a default▶ 6:10Airtable shipped a form-submitter 'email me a copy' feature, gated on creating an account, without an A/B test because customer analysis showed demand and the signup impact was visible in top-line metrics.
• Reward customer impact so teams are not forced to experiment everything▶ 7:50
• Offer a reverse trial: freemium plus a premium trial▶ 39:39
• Give non-self-serve products a hands-off way to experience value▶ 44:40
• Map growth work to the Join, Evaluate, Upgrade, Expand funnel▶ 51:54Airtable's growth teams mapped to it: acquisition to join, activation to evaluate, monetization to upgrade, with expand added later.
• Keep a North Star at least six months, then change it deliberately▶ 36:26Airtable's growth org changed its North Star a couple of times, including from revenue to user and customer growth.
• Focus growth on user growth when handing off to sales later▶ 34:34The shift gave the team more strategic clarity and let them move faster.
• Use more customer contact and beta testing in B2B growth▶ 59:18

Lenny's Podcast · Jan 29

Lessons from Airtable’s unconventional growth strategy | Zoelle Egner

Grew with unconventional tactics: customer success before sales, Slack-fed outreach to every promising signup, branded AirPods for champions, and remnant billboards near New York buyers' offices. Usage often spread from 10 to 1,000 people inside one company in a year, with champions pitching IT after 500 users.

Tips

• Talk to new signups early to find and build champions▶ 42:42From the patterns in a handful of champions (for example five content calendar users with a given title) the team built ad campaigns, templates and hooks.
• Invest in customer success before sales and actually act on what it learns▶ 1:05:05Champions spread it internally, so when IT was asked to pay it already had 500 users and deals were easy to close.
• Turn customer success insights into templates, content and a repeatable conveyor belt▶ 50:00
• Use remnant billboards to signal legitimacy to target enterprise buyers▶ 33:33Some inventory costs in the low thousands of dollars per billboard.
• Treat every touchpoint as brand trust, and polish sample content and emails▶ 29:55Airtable closed six-figure deals with a 15-person team partly because of this perceived level of care.
• Do not expect templates to drive top-of-funnel without an SEO engine▶ 59:20Airtable's templates were not a meaningful traffic source, while Zapier gets a ton of traffic from its programmatic SEO.
• Spend on really good swag for champions▶ 48:50A couple hundred bucks per champion was judged totally worth it.
• Target psychographic personas through interests, not job titles▶ 37:30This unconventionally targeted Facebook acquisition worked quite well for Airtable at the time.
• Get champions first and buyers later in horizontal B2B products▶ 45:00Airtable grew from 10 people to 1,000 inside a company in a year.
• Track how many customers got promoted using your product▶ 52:20
• Merge marketing and customer success goals into one function▶ 50:59

Lenny's Podcast · Nov 24

The ultimate guide to founder-led sales | Jen Abel (co-founder of JJELLYFISH)

Began with a technical insight and took far longer to find its market than market-first companies.

Lenny's Podcast · Jun 25

Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor)

Ramp runs sprint planning in an Airtable template that scores ideas and converts each impact metric into the common currency.

Tips

• Buy off-the-shelf tools and only build what is proprietary or strategic▶ 59:50Mutiny personalization had material impact and let Ramp scale website experimentation.

Lenny's Podcast · Apr 30

How to achieve hypergrowth in your business and career | Carilu Dietrich (Atlassian)

Sales engage only after a threshold of users at an account are already paying by credit card.

Tips

• Delay net-new sales prospecting and sell first to existing customers▶ 38:45At Airtable and Miro, salespeople engaged only after a threshold of users was already paying on credit cards, sometimes 20 to 40 people at an account.

Lenny's Podcast · Apr 2

The ultimate guide to adding a PLG motion | Hila Qu (Reforge, GitLab)

Spreads when users invite their team, an example of built-in collaboration that supports product-led acquisition.

Lenny's Podcast · Sep 1

How to grow a subscription business | Yuriy Timen (Grammarly, Canva, Airtable)

It has built-in network effects through team collaboration. Its robust editor leaves new users lost, so onboarding needs personalizing.

Tips

• Only invest in virality if network effects exist from day one▶ 13:52Grammarly tried to engineer network effects and found it an uphill battle.
• Personalize onboarding for complex products using information gathered up front▶ 53:50Early-stage companies can get 2 to 4x activation gains from onboarding, and later-stage ones (Series B and beyond) 20 to 30 percent lifts.