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I disagree on Airtable. Their homepage currently says "Part spreadsheet, part database, and entirely flexible, teams use Airtable to organize their work, their way." I'm a software developer. I have no idea what they are selling, based on that. Is this some sort of souped up Google Sheets competitor? If so, what does it do better? Is this a team workflow management tool? If so, why bring up spreadsheets and databases? I suppose some teams may try to organise their workflow using spreadsheets, but this far into the 21st century, most people use tools like Jira or Github Issues or Monday.com or one of fifty other tools. Is this a software development tool? If so, errr, what? I literally haven't the slightest idea, after reading their homepage, what problem this is trying to solve, what solution it is offering, and what the target market is. Am I a potential customer? I haven't the slightest idea. Can this help solve any problem I have? Maybe, but the homepage goes out of its way to refuse to answer this question. Airtable has even targeted ads at me. It's not like I've only spent two minutes looking at their site. I still haven't the faintest clue what they do, let alone why they are better than competing alternatives. |
I think that is why it is too generic for you. You already understand the underlying concepts of a spreadsheet, a database etc. Their target audience doesn't, but they know they need something _like_ that.
I think Airtable is in the no-code/low-code camp. Business people that have some technical ability and used to write Excel macros, can build a tool for their custom business process. Just like they did with MS Excel (or even MS Access) before.
And those people react to the buzzwords. "Oh, it can do a little bit of everything in one tool? And I can get it done without talking to the IT department? Book it."
I think you are too far ahead in your abilities to see the value it provides for people that rely on developer time to get anything technical done.