Airtable

Airtable is a platform for building business apps without writing code. Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas founded the company in 2012. It is based in San Francisco.

At first glance it looks like a spreadsheet, but each table works like a database. Fields can hold attachments, links to other records, checkboxes and dropdown lists. Users build views such as grids, calendars, kanban boards and galleries on the same data. They can also add forms, automations and simple interfaces for other people on the team.

Teams use Airtable to run content calendars, product roadmaps, inventory lists, event planning and many other jobs that outgrow a spreadsheet. Its customers include small teams on free plans and large companies in media, retail and technology. In recent years Airtable has added AI features that can summarise records, sort data and help build apps from a prompt. Howie Liu is the chief executive. The company is privately held.