Executive Spotlight: Who Is Howie Liu, Airtable's Co-Founder and CEO? (2027)
Howie Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, a no-code platform where teams build workflows, apps and AI agents on connected data. Airtable began by putting a database behind a spreadsheet-style interface and has since added AI features and enterprise tooling.
Before Airtable he founded Etacts, an intelligent CRM that Salesforce acquired.
This page uses public professional information only.
Current role and company
Airtable's homepage identifies Howie Liu as the company's CEO and the host of its Builders & Breakthroughs series. Airtable's own newsroom (August 2021), Stanford's Technology Ventures Program (May 2021) and Madrona's Founded & Funded podcast page (June 2023) all describe him as co-founder and CEO.
- TitleCo-Founder and CEO, Airtable (per the company's homepage and newsroom).
- Co-founderAndrew Ofstad, whom Liu names as his co-founder in an Airtable newsroom item.
- What Airtable doesNo-code platform for AI-powered workflows, apps and agents on connected data (company description).
Career path
- Etacts. Founded the intelligent CRM startup that Salesforce acquired. Stanford's podcast page describes it as a one-year sprint to acquisition.
- Salesforce. After the acquisition he worked at Salesforce, an experience he says shaped his belief that app building could be opened up with simple building blocks (Madrona, June 2023).
- Airtable, 2012 or 2013 onward. Co-founded Airtable. Sources differ on the start: Stanford says 2013, while Liu refers to a 2012 deck in Airtable's newsroom. He says the team spent about two and a half years building before the public launch.
- AI era. Announced embedded AI features in May 2023 (per Madrona's page), and Airtable now describes AI app building, agents and MCP support.
What he is known for
- Reframing the spreadsheet. Airtable focused on the lightweight database uses of spreadsheets rather than number-crunching, presenting a database under a spreadsheet-like interface.
- A platform, not just a tool. He says the original goal was an app platform that democratizes software creation, and that a roadmap from a 2012 deck took nearly a decade to play out.
- Product-led growth, then enterprise. He describes product-led growth getting Airtable far, with direct enterprise sales added later to reach larger deployments.
- Recognition. Fortune lists him in its 2021 40 Under 40 ranking.
Leadership style and philosophy
These points are paraphrased from Liu's own interviews, not quoted. Dates are the publication dates of the pages.
- Conviction plus pragmatism (Madrona, June 2023). He says founders need bold ambition to challenge incumbents, paired with a focused gap to exploit.
- More deliberate the second time (Madrona, June 2023). He says Etacts taught him to plan Airtable with a clear opportunity thesis and validation at each step, and describes product-market fit as stages from prototype to invite-only alpha to wider launch.
- Patience early (Airtable newsroom, August 2021). He describes investing heavily in an early relational-database decision that was hard to reverse, and notes that many seed investors did not yet understand low-code app building.
- AI with a human in the loop (Madrona, June 2023). He favors embedding large language models in no-code workflows with human-reviewed outputs, staying interoperable across models rather than building Airtable's own large model, and not training on customer data by default.
Key numbers
All figures below are reported by Airtable on its own homepage, as read on October 31, 2026. The page gives no earlier dates.
- Organizations using AirtableOver 500,000, shown as "Trusted by 500,000 leading teams" (company-reported).
- Data scaleApps built on data sets of 100 million records; HyperDB record limits in the hundreds of millions (company-reported).
- Workflow scaleWorkflows that scale to tens of thousands of users (company-reported).
What to watch next
Worth tracking: how Airtable's AI agents and MCP integrations are adopted, new episodes in the Builders & Breakthroughs series, and any updated customer figures on the homepage.
Questions people ask
Who is Howie Liu?
He is the co-founder and CEO of Airtable, the no-code platform for building workflows, apps and AI agents on connected data.
What is Howie Liu's current role?
Co-Founder and CEO of Airtable, per the company's homepage and newsroom.
What did Howie Liu do before Airtable?
He founded Etacts, an intelligent CRM acquired by Salesforce, and then worked at Salesforce.
When was Airtable founded?
Sources differ. Stanford's podcast page says Liu co-founded it in 2013, while Liu refers to a 2012 deck in Airtable's newsroom. He says the team spent about two and a half years building before launch.
How many organizations use Airtable?
Airtable's homepage says over 500,000 organizations use it (company-reported, read October 31, 2026).
Sources
- Airtable: Home · Liu's title, product description, company-reported figures
- Airtable newsroom: Secret Leaders podcast (August 24, 2021) · Early build period, vision, co-founder
- Stanford Technology Ventures Program: Building Startups Fast and Slow · Etacts, Airtable founding year (2013)
- Madrona: Airtable CEO Howie Liu on Product-Led Growth (June 13, 2023) · Product philosophy, AI approach
- Fortune: 40 Under 40 2021, Howie Liu · Recognition
- Gold House: Howie Liu · Page naming Liu with the headshot used for the hero
Facts were read from the linked pages on October 31, 2026. Some pages were read through a fetch tool that returns summaries, so confirm details on the original page. The hero photo is a headshot credited to Airtable, centered on a card. This page covers public professional information only.
Top photo: Airtable