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Zoelle Egner29 January 2023

Lessons from Airtable’s unconventional growth strategy

6Frameworks
15Insights

Frameworks in this episode

Marketing5 steps

Champions at Scale: Manual-to-Machine Word-of-Mouth Engine

Over-invest by hand in early product champions, learn their patterns, then productize those patterns into scalable content.

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Marketing3 steps

Elevate a Profession, Not a Category

Instead of creating a software category, make a job into a meaningful identity people will fight for.

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Entrepreneurship3 steps

Laughably Small MVP Under High Stakes

Ship the smallest possible thing even for high-stakes problems — it delivers impact and reveals what to actually build.

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Marketing3 steps

PR and Launch Strategy: Credibility Over Leads

Treat PR as a credibility asset for hiring and cold outbound, and replace one big launch with a cadence of launches.

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Marketing4 steps

Punch Above Your Weight: Trust Signaling for Small Startups

Use small, cheap signals of polish and legitimacy so large customers trust a tiny company with big contracts.

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Marketing3 steps

Systematic Customer Conversations

Build a lightweight, repeatable system to talk to customers by phone on a regular cadence.

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Insights & moments

The myth-busts, hot takes, explainers, and tools worth keeping.

Myth Buster· 2

Myth Buster58:30

Templates Did Not Drive Airtable's Top of Funnel

A widespread belief is that Airtable's templates powered its acquisition — Zoelle says that's simply not true. Templates were great for narrowing a horizontal product's surface area and for expansion within companies, but Airtable never optimized them for search, so 'good luck finding them.' Programmatic-SEO template plays (like Zapier's) work only if you invest heavily in the SEO engine, which Airtable didn't.

  • Myth: templates were Airtable's top-of-funnel / acquisition driver
  • Reality: templates helped narrow surface area and drive in-company expansion
  • Airtable never optimized templates for SEO, so they weren't discoverable in search
  • Zapier succeeded because it built templates as a deliberate programmatic-SEO play
  • Building templates without an SEO investment won't magically produce leads

“so a lot of people think that templates were what drove like air tables top of funnel that is not the case”

Zoelle Egner · 59:00
#templates#seo#acquisition#myth
Myth Buster1:01:30

PR Is for Credibility, Not Leads

Zoelle argues that just getting PR is not a good goal — most coverage won't generate leads or users, since few people click the one link buried in paragraph twelve. What PR is genuinely good for is credibility, and it pays off when you have a clear plan to leverage it. Her two recommended uses: improving hiring response and boosting cold-outbound response rates, because both are proactive emails where you control distribution and can measure impact.

  • 'Just getting PR' is a bad goal — it rarely produces leads or users
  • Buried article links get few clicks; readers won't remember to Google you
  • PR's real value is credibility, if you have a plan to leverage it
  • Best two uses: hiring and improving cold-outbound response rates
  • Both work because you control distribution and can measure the impact

“so just getting PR is not a good goal”

Zoelle Egner · 1:01:30

“like most of the time PR is not going to get you leads or users it's just not”

Zoelle Egner · 1:02:00
#pr#marketing#hiring#myth

Hot Take· 2

Hot Take50:30

Customer Success and Marketing Are Basically the Same Thing

Zoelle's spicy opinion: marketing and customer success do the same core work — identify customer needs, position the product as the solution, remove friction, encourage sharing, and turn insights into resources. They just use different tactics (scalable vs. in-the-weeds). Her unofficial metric for both teams at Airtable was how many people they got promoted for using the product, because there's no better evangelist than someone whose career you've materially improved.

  • Both functions identify needs, position the product, remove friction, and drive sharing
  • The only difference is tactics: marketing scales, CS works with individuals
  • Marketers should be confident the right people get genuine, shareable value
  • Unofficial Airtable metric: how many users got promoted for using the product
  • Best evangelist = someone whose career you materially helped improve

“frankly there's not a better evangelist than a person whose career you have materially helped to improve based on like matching the right person to…”

Zoelle Egner · 52:00

“so much that one of my unofficial metrics for both marketing and customer success at airtable unofficial was like how many people we've gotten promoted…”

Zoelle Egner · 52:00
#customer-success#marketing#metrics#hot-take
Hot Take54:30

Elevate a Profession, Not a Category

Zoelle pushes back on the idea that great product marketing means creating a new Gartner category — it's a huge lift, often unhelpful, and buyers don't actually shop by tiny niches. What works instead is elevating a profession, the way Gainsight created customer success or companies made DevOps a sexy job. A job is an identity people will fight for; a software category is just a line item nobody gets excited about.

  • Creating a Gartner-style category is an enormous lift and often a waste of time
  • Carving out a niche with 'no competitors' isn't how buyers actually behave
  • Effective alternative: elevate a profession (Gainsight → customer success; DevOps rebrand)
  • A job is an identity people fight for; a category is a budget line item
  • Build community around the job, not around you, and people take you with them

“because a job is an identity and people will fight for an identity right a category of software is like a line item on your…”

Zoelle Egner · 55:30
#product-marketing#positioning#category#hot-take

Explainer· 3

Explainer26:00

Every Touchpoint Is Adding or Removing Trust

For products handling mission-critical workflows or sensitive data — like Airtable or Block Party — trust is the whole game, and Zoelle argues founders underestimate how every single touchpoint builds it. From word of mouth to ads, landing pages, signup flows and support, each moment signals either 'we understand you' or not, and 'we operate at a higher level than our size would suggest.' Pairing that brand experience with a product that delivers turns word of mouth into a growth engine.

  • Trust is essential when customers hand you sensitive data or their safety
  • Every touchpoint — ads, landing pages, signup flows, support — adds or removes trust
  • Two signals to send: 'we understand you specifically' and 'we operate above our size'
  • This lets customers commit six figures without fear despite your small stage
  • Brand + product experience together makes word of mouth a major growth driver

“in my experience people and especially Founders really underestimate how much every single touch point of her customer has from word of mouth or the…”

Zoelle Egner · 26:30
#brand#trust#marketing#b2b
Explainer37:00

Targeting a 'Tinkerer' Psychographic Instead of a Job Title

Airtable's best champions weren't defined by any single job title but by a mindset — tinkerers who love new tech and assembling Lego-like building blocks. Since Facebook can't target 'tinkerer mentality,' Zoelle's team found the media, podcasts and interests those people cluster around and targeted those, then built lookalike audiences. She's clear this was effective at the time but no longer works for B2B.

  • The ideal champion was a psychographic profile, not a job title — a 'tinkerer'
  • 'Build your own software' messaging repels most people, so generic ads failed
  • They targeted the media, podcasts and interests that tinkerers cluster around
  • Successful clusters were expanded via lookalike audiences
  • Caveat: this Facebook-ads era is over — don't expect it to work for B2B now

“and this is like a sort of tinkerer persona someone who likes new technology they like putting together the Lego building blocks of things”

Zoelle Egner · 38:00
#growth#advertising#targeting#airtable
Explainer42:00

Champions and Buyers Are Different People at Airtable

Airtable's champion — the person building a base with a glass of wine on Friday — was not the buyer who controlled budget. In the early days the team ran a manual Slack integration that surfaced every signup's title and company with a button to email them instantly, deliberately over-investing in individual champions. Once those champions had 500 coworkers using the product, Airtable could go to IT six months later and ask them to pay.

  • The person who loves building in Airtable is not the person with the budget
  • A Slack integration surfaced each signup's title/company with a one-click outreach button
  • Unscalable by design — but it built the mental model of what a champion looks like
  • Over-investing in one champion turned them into support for their whole org
  • Monetization came later: show IT that 500 people already use it, then charge

“the person who is going to like sit down with a glass of wine on a Friday and build an airtable base was not the…”

Zoelle Egner · 45:00
#customer-success#plg#champions#sales

Story· 3

Story05:00

Vaccinate CA: How a Tweet Turned Into the Country's Best Vaccine Map

Zoelle quit Airtable to run Vaccinate CA, a nonprofit born from a Patrick McKenzie tweet: call pharmacists, ask who they can vaccinate, and put the answer on a map so no one has to make the same call twice. Powered by phones, Discord, Zoom and Airtable, hundreds of volunteers built a database more comprehensive than the federal government's, and their data fed vaccine locations into Google Maps. They deliberately shut it down after six months once the official systems caught up.

  • Founded off a single Patrick McKenzie (patio11) tweet with a simple premise: call, record, publish
  • Ran mostly on Discord, Zoom, and Airtable used like a spreadsheet — no sophisticated tech
  • Scraped and validated official sources, becoming a clearinghouse more complete than the government's
  • Their location data was what fed Google Maps vaccine lookups
  • Chose to shut down after ~6 months rather than pull resources from more impactful work

“which is if you call a pharmacist and you ask them who they can give a vaccine to and what vaccine they have and then…”

Zoelle Egner · 06:00

“and we built an API uh we were working directly with Google and if you ever looked up like vaccine locations on Google Maps that…”

Zoelle Egner · 07:30
#nonprofit#covid#airtable#mvp
Story18:30

How Power Mapping Got a Non-Technical Person Into Tech

Graduating into the recession with no obvious path into tech, Zoelle mapped the industry's 'nodes of influence' — the VCs and executives who direct where investment and attention flow — by drawing diagrams from people's blog posts. She used that map to target a well-connected YC-backed startup where she thought she could be uniquely helpful, then cold-emailed the CEO. She landed her first tech role after ignoring him for two years and sending a self-deprecating apology email.

  • She tracked how executives and VCs moved between companies to see who shaped the ecosystem
  • As a non-technical person in 2010–2011 she needed a people-based, not code-based, way in
  • Strategy: find a smaller, less 'sexy' YC-connected startup that struggled to hire
  • Got the role by cold-emailing the CEO while still in college, offering professor intros
  • Reconnected two years later with an apology email — 'I have no experience that's useful but I work really hard'

“so you can imagine in any Community there are sort of like nodes of influence people who know a lot of folks they have money…”

Zoelle Egner · 19:00
#career#networking#job-search
Story33:30

Why Airtable's 'Pointless' Billboards Actually Worked

Airtable got roasted on Twitter for vague billboards, but they had a different goal than critics assumed: signaling legitimacy to large enterprises in specific industries (fashion, media) whose office locations they knew. When a buyer walking to work had seen the billboard, a six-figure Airtable request felt safer to approve. And it was cheap — they mostly bought remnant inventory in the low thousands of dollars, exploiting the belief that only huge companies buy billboards.

  • The real goal was signaling legitimacy to large enterprise buyers, not broad awareness
  • They targeted geographies where target industries' offices were concentrated (NYC fashion/media)
  • Seeing the billboard made buyers likelier to approve a six-figure spend
  • Cost was low — mostly remnant inventory in the low thousands per billboard
  • It exploited the assumption that 'you only buy billboards if you're huge'

“for us it was all about signaling to some very large companies that we were a legitimate and large enough company that they could trust”

Zoelle Egner · 34:00

“and everyone thinks that you only buy Billboards if you're huge”

Zoelle Egner · 34:30
#marketing#billboards#enterprise#signaling

Tool· 1

Tool48:30

Spend on Really Good Swag for Your Champions

Airtable spent a 'hilarious' amount on genuinely fancy swag — branded AirPods-level, not pens or stickers. When you give an already-identified champion something that good, they show it off to everyone and it prompts questions at their desk, earning a great pitch you didn't have to give. For a couple hundred dollars per champion, Zoelle found it hard to measure but very effective.

  • Invest in high-quality swag (branded AirPods level), not cheap pens or stickers
  • Target it at people already identified as champions
  • Good swag gets shown off and sparks organic conversations
  • The champion delivers the pitch for you when asked
  • ~a couple hundred dollars each — hard to measure but effective (works best in-office)

“if you gave people something really good like not a pen or a sticker really good they would show enough to absolutely everyone that they…”

Zoelle Egner · 49:00
#swag#champions#growth#wordofmouth

Takeaway· 4

Takeaway15:30

The Power of a Laughably Small MVP

Vaccinate CA started as basically a spreadsheet on phones, and that stripped-down version both had huge impact and revealed what actually needed building. Zoelle found all her assumptions about oversight and tooling were wrong — a lighter-weight approach let them move faster as regulations kept changing. Her takeaway: if you think you need to add more, you can probably prune instead.

  • The initial product was 'basically a spreadsheet on like phones' yet had tremendous impact
  • Building tiny surfaced what was actually needed instead of relying on assumptions
  • Agility mattered most because the regulatory landscape kept shifting
  • This worked even in an extremely high-stakes context (people's health)
  • A fast-changing world and a small team act as a forcing function to build small

“so yeah if you're if you're listening to this and you were thinking maybe you needed to add more stuff I bet you could prune”

Zoelle Egner · 17:30
#mvp#product#startups
Takeaway14:30

A Leader's Real Title Is 'Repeater in Chief'

Across every leadership role, Zoelle found she had to repeat the same three talking points thousands of times, even when it felt like everyone already knew. People are never listening as much as you think, and if you don't relentlessly repeat yourself they fill in the blanks with wild things. Done right, the repetition is actually motivating rather than boring.

  • She estimates repeating the same three talking points 'five thousand times' at Vaccinate CA
  • Most people are never listening as much as you assume they are
  • Without repetition, people invent their own (often wrong) version of the message
  • You have to say it in many different ways, in writing and out loud
  • Done correctly, repetition is motivating, not tedious

“that the CEO and Founders job their actual title is repeater in Chief”

Lenny Rachitsky · 15:00

“it really people will fill in the blanks with totally wild things if you don't continuously have that discipline of repeating yourself”

Zoelle Egner · 15:00
#leadership#communication#messaging
Takeaway29:30

Sample Content That Signals 'We Built This For You'

A small, high-leverage way to punch above your weight: instead of filling sample content with 'Jane Doe' twelve times, use references to your customer's industry and inside jokes. When a designer spots a Steve Jobs joke, they feel the team was thinking about them specifically. That signals the product is more likely to fit their needs than something generic, and it makes people want to root for you.

  • Sample content is a big, often-overlooked polish opportunity
  • Industry references and in-jokes beat generic placeholder names
  • It signals the builders were thinking about that specific customer
  • That perception makes the product feel more likely to fit their needs
  • Small polish that doesn't take much time but builds trust and rooting interest

“take the time to not have it be like Jane Doe 12 times in the name list have it be references to your industry so…”

Zoelle Egner · 30:00
#product#polish#brand
Takeaway1:03:30

Run a Series of Launches, Not One Big One

Launches don't need to be about PR — in many cases PR is a distraction. Instead of a single big launch, Zoelle recommends a series of launches that keep you top of mind, build momentum with users, and let you show up in many places. Audiences respond to novelty, so a big annual launch plus smaller ones every couple of months gives people ongoing reasons to care.

  • PR is often a distraction from what a launch should actually do
  • A series of launches beats one big launch for staying top of mind
  • Repeated launches build momentum with users and reach new communities
  • Audiences respond to novelty — give them fresh reasons to care
  • Pattern: a big annual launch plus additional ones every couple of months

“instead you can have not just one big launch but like a series of launches that allow you to stay top of mind to create…”

Zoelle Egner · 1:04:00
#launches#marketing#momentum