Howie Liu on Airtable's Early Days, Scaling, and AI

Village Global Podcast

Howie Liu, founder and CEO of Airtable, was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha live in downtown San Francisco in front of an audience of Village Global founders and friends of the firm.
Highlights:
- Embracing discomfort is part of the founder's journey. Learning to tolerate and even appreciate this discomfort is important.
- Making decisions when you feel "almost ready" rather than waiting for perfect readiness is often necessary.
- It's crucial to understand the underlying problems customers are trying to solve, not just their feature requests. Founders should resist the temptation to become "feature checklist machines" and instead focus on core problems.
- There's growing fatigue around AI hype in enterprises. Successful AI implementation requires focusing on specific, valuable use cases rather than broad promises.
- Airtable spent 2.5 years building their initial product, focusing on creating a platform rather than just a simple collaboration tool. They balanced building a horizontal platform with targeted use case marketing to appeal to different users.
- It's crucial to understand the context and biases of advice-givers, no matter how successful they are. Having strong conviction in your vision, while being open to feedback, is essential for success.
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