Airtable’s story is otherworldly. The company was valued at $2.5 billion just six months ago when the company raised $185 million in Series D funding. Now it’s worth $5.8 billion thanks to new investors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, wanting in on the action. Series E is in the books with another $270 million raised. Mind-blowing as this sounds, Airtable is just getting started.
“From the investor lens, the corporate growth signals there’s so much more room for us to grow. Especially as we start aggressively investing into enterprise products, focus on enterprise needs, (and) build out our sales and marketing engine." –Andrew Liu, Airtable’s CEO
The software is fun and easy to use, so much so that it’s turned archaic office tools into verbs – spreadsheeting and databasing 😎. And end users can be found anywhere inside the enterprise, from engineering to accounting to marketing. They now count over a quarter of a million customers since the company was founded in 2012, with the number of paying enterprise customers growing almost 350% alone last year.
Airtable is built on a freemium model and another stellar example of product-led growth. The sales community should ask again, is this the future model for sales? Kyle Poyar from Openview Partners was on The Product-Led Sales Development podcast recently and shared when you make a product so intuitive and simple and word quickly spreads, it nullifies the need to spend early on and invest in sales. Later, once adoption has taken hold, is when sales can cross-sell, upsell, and expand across the customer base.
“Hire for sales last.” –Kyle Poyar, Openview Partners
Indeed, Airtable is hiring for sales last. Get in with this company now if you’re an enterprise sales rep looking for an opportunity with lots of upside.
