Howie Liu (Airtable) - Building Startups, Fast and Slow

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2021

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable. Inspired by his own experiences learning to code and building customized business apps, he co-founded the company in 2013 to democratize software creation. Prior to that, he was the founder of Etacts, an intelligent CRM tool that was acquired by Salesforce. While Etacts was a furious one-year sprint to acquisition, Liu followed a very deliberate, long-term approach with his second startup. In this conversation with Stanford lecturer Ravi Belani, he offers advice to innovators who seek to create complex products that can’t be prototyped in a week-long hacking session.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Who you are defines how you build.
0:06.7	This is the entrepreneurial thought leader series.
0:10.7	Brought to you by Stanford E. Corner.
0:14.2	Today, we are delighted to welcome Howie Liu to ETL.
0:19.3	Howie is the CEO of Airtable, inspired by his own experiences learning to
0:24.4	code and inventing his first job by building customized business apps. He co-founded Airtable to
0:30.2	democratize software creation. AirTable's mission is to enable anyone to build the software tools
0:36.6	that they need to meet their needs.
0:39.8	And I should say that Howie is another powerful example of how first generation Americans are at
0:45.0	the forefront of entrepreneurship. He was born in Texas to Korean parents who came to the United
0:50.0	States from China. And Howie went on to study at Duke, where he was a double threat.
0:54.9	He double majored in mechanical engineering and public policy for all of you that like to
0:59.4	straddle fences both on the social sciences and the engineering sciences.
1:03.7	And how he jumped into entrepreneurship fairly early after Duke.
1:07.0	He spent a year on his first venture, which was a next-gen CRM, company called ETACT.
1:12.4	Then he spent a year stint in product at Salesforce.
1:16.1	And then he started Airtable in January of 2013 with fellow Blue Devil classmates,
1:21.0	Andrew Offsted and Emmett Nicholas.
1:23.7	Airtable has raised over $600 million in funding and has several hundred employees.
1:29.3	So with that, please welcome Howie Lou to ETL.
1:32.3	Howie, lots of virtual ETL and Stanford love for you.
1:36.3	Thanks so much for having you.
	...

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