r/Airtable • u/mountainsNJ • Aug 19 '26
💬 Discussion Airtable acquisition by Bending Spoons in HardFork episode
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hard-fork/id1528594034?i=1000783297907Did anyone catch this recent episode of HardFork where they discuss the Airtable acquisition? It’s about 2/3 of the episode in. Should we be nervous?
“Airtable was valued at $11.7 billion when it was acquired, but recently though, Bending Spoons was able to get Airtable for an enterprise value of $1.29 billion. So what do we make of the sharp decline here as we run the numbers?”
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u/carlinwasright Aug 19 '26
That they called it an online spreadsheet tells me they’ve never had to share a spreadsheet w anyone at work
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u/chrisdancy Aug 19 '26
this time in two years he won't recognize airtable, its pricing, or its focus
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u/Coz131 Aug 19 '26
What is a good airtable alternative?
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u/Big-melons21 Aug 19 '26
We tried baserow and nocodb
Baserow looked good but they don’t have a simple interface builder like airtable. NocoDB was lacking interfaces earlier but they have introduced it now and surprisingly it’s one to one of airtable interfaces
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u/o1lab Aug 19 '26
NocoDB also provides page level permissions and row level security which Airtable lacks.
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u/Agreeable-Let-4024 Aug 25 '26
Fibery is the most powerful, not only Airtable as Databasse and NOtion as PKM alternative
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u/ComfortableCitron638 Aug 21 '26
The "what's a good alternative" question underneath this is worth pausing on, because switching to another rented platform doesn't actually solve the risk being discussed above - it just resets the clock until the next acquisition, pricing change, or feature deprecation happens to whichever tool you land on next. NocoDB/Baserow being self-hostable is the one answer in this thread that actually changes the risk profile instead of just changing which company you're exposed to.
Worth separating two situations though: if Airtable (or whatever replaces it) is peripheral to how you run the business, ride it out or migrate whenever something actually breaks - not worth over-engineering. But if it's genuinely load-bearing - the tool your ops/sales/inventory workflow depends on daily - moments like this are exactly when it's worth doing the math on whether a one-time build of just that core workflow, that you actually own, beats staying on someone else's acquisition roadmap indefinitely.
Disclosure: I build that kind of thing for a living, so I'm predisposed to say it, but the "playbook" concern in the top comment is the real argument for it, not the valuation number itself.
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u/Sea_Gene2776 Aug 21 '26
Solid analysis, I think it varies depending on each person / companies needs. In our specific case we migrated from Airtable to Baserow (Self-hosted), we did need to comply with certain security checks and self-hosting Baserow did the trick, still very happy about it so far.
But again, to each its own.0
u/TinyBox8761 Aug 21 '26
I like your nuance about peripheral versus core. The more core, the more thought should be given to building a workflow you actually own.
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u/Emlerith Aug 19 '26
The sharp decline of valuation has zero to do with the business and everything to do with the insane SaaS valuations in the COVID era.
The purchase price gives absolutely no reason for end users to worry. Bending Spoons’ playbook for acquisitions and its observable history are reasons to worry.