Since co-founding Airtable in 2013, CEO Howie Liu has guided the company through a remarkable growth trajectory. With over 500k customers and counting, the AI-powered, no-code platform for building custom applications has skillfully scaled to meet the evolving needs of its users.
Howie recently joined us at our annual CEO summit for a discussion about his experience scaling Airtable and how he thinks about platform evolution, enterprise sales, and AI integration.
Here were some of our takeaways from the conversation.
Scaling From Product-Led Growth to Enterprise Sales
Airtable was designed for product-led growth (PLG). For the first few years, Howie didn’t even hire sales reps. Instead, Airtable scaled to $30M in revenue through self-service adoption.
At the $30M mark, Airtable brought on its first sales reps, in a role Howie described as “demand-fulfillment” sales.This role focused on:
Targeting existing users
Consolidating usage across an organization
When Airtable was PLG-focused, a client of theirs might have dozens of accounts. The demand fulfillment sales reps would reach out and offer to consolidate these accounts under a single contract. (This approach also offered Airtable a path to expand a contract, anticipating the company’s growth).
According to Howie, fulfillment sales work best in the early stages because you’re capitalizing on your organization’s “organic momentum and goodwill.”
But as a company grows, there’s an increased need for strategic selling, “where you have to develop a value proposition that’s more than just ‘people like it,’” Howie said.
At Airtable, strategic selling focuses on:
Positioning the product as a “system of record” for critical business functions
Engaging with executives
Helping executives “champion” Airtable within the company
Asking executives questions like, “what if we made Airtable the system of record for all marketing operations?” created organizational buy-in and executive sponsorship, often unlocking a bigger budget.
When considering demand fulfillment sales and strategic selling, Howie said it doesn’t have to be an either/or question.
“Figuring out how to hybridize the two is actually the most powerful go-to-market tactic. We can go into an account and say, ‘You do have a lot of organic adoption and people willing to back for us already, and proven use cases that your team has basically already piloted.”.
Striking the Horizontal Vs. Vertical Balance
Howie Liu in conversation with Slack COO Sarah Walker at Elevate.
When raising initial funding, investors urged Airtable to focus on a specific vertical. But Howie held firm, making the then-controversial decision to stay horizontal.
“The Airtable product is very flexible. By definition, it’s this flexible data schema that every customer can define their own business objects on top of,” he said. “Every company decides their own use case.”
More recently, Airtable has noticed specific vertical use cases it can focus on. The team identified a user concentration in product operations (with users harnessing Airtable for product roadmaps) and decided to capitalize on what Howie called a “hot spot.” By finding patterns in how customers use Airtable, the team can develop more targeted solution selling.
That doesn’t mean Airtable becomes a less flexible platform — just that the team also addresses specific use cases. Airtable started with ultimate flexibility, where users defined their own schemas; now, they’re layering in solution-selling on top of that foundation.
Reimagining Products for the AI Era
Howie cited the large implementation gap when it comes to companies successfully integrating AI into their organizations: you need to do more than simply layer AI capabilities onto existing products.
Airtable’s vision is clear: Howie sees the company as solving the AI implementation gap by giving the next generation of AI builders — those embedded in the critical, everyday business operations — the ability to build tailored AI solutions and drive real impact.
AI is transforming the no-code space: where companies used to use traditional no-code interfaces, they can now prompt AI using natural language to build entire apps from scratch. While many companies have focused on AI-generated code, Airtable empowers non-technical builders to create sophisticated apps without writing code.
Howie said it’s key to stay at the cutting edge of AI capabilities to keep your company flexible and appealing to consumers. He cited the rapid advancement from basic language prediction to true reasoning capability, and mentioned that newer LLMs enable completely different product experiences.
Starting AI Transformations From Within The Company
When you implement AI, you need to build a culture that embraces it internally. At Airtable, that has manifested as internal hackathons where teams can reimagine their work with AI, and planning in-person events to “dogfood” upcoming AI features.
Howie also advised tapping employees across departments to be AI leaders.
“We’ve deputized people across the company to be what we’re calling AI ambassadors … a person who’s the most savvy at figuring out AI and how to bring it into their department,” Howie said.
Even for companies fully embracing AI, Howie emphasized the importance of balancing rapid adoption with robust security. Enterprise customers often have stringent requirements — meeting those standards is essential to maintaining their trust.
As a security measure, Airtable offers AI features that run entirely in their infrastructure. The team also considers PLG in their AI features so they can continue implementing rapid innovation despite enterprise red tape.
Balancing Innovation and Growth
In the near future, AI will be essential to work — and in the most effective implementations, humans will leverage AI agents.
According to Howie, the humans who harness AI will outperform humans who don’t use it. He believes we’re just at the beginning of true AI reasoning capabilities, and predicted that disruption will happen faster than most people expect.
AI can be transformative for enterprises — and the real winners will be the nimble adopters who keep an eye on innovation but pay attention to customers’ needs and requirements. Founders need to maintain a delicate balance: scaling a company while preserving its innovative edge.
Thank you, Howie, for joining us at this year’s Elevate.
_
To learn more about Airtable, visit their website. To receive more Salesforce Ventures content directly in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter >>>
Welcome to the Miroverse: Unlocking Expression in the Enterprise
We all know “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Yet most software apps for knowledge workers only provide new ways to write and organize words — and little-to-no ability to collaborate visually. This problem is particularly acute in the new era of distributed work. In the past, you gathered around a whiteboard in a
Continue Reading Welcome to the Miroverse: Unlocking Expression in the Enterprise
by
Alex Kayyal, Nowi Kallen, Jessica Bartos and Kartik Gupta
