
Airtable has a bold mission: to democratize software creation, enabling anyone to build the custom applications they need to power their work, regardless of technical skill. This vision of empowerment isn't just an external mantra; it's a deeply ingrained practice within the company itself. Airtable employees, across all departments, are avid users and builders on their own platform. This extensive internal adoption—a true "Airtable on Airtable" approach—is fundamental to how they innovate, refine their product, and ensure it genuinely meets the diverse needs of its global user base.

### The Ultimate Proving Ground: Running a Company on Airtable

From product operations and marketing campaign management to HR workflows and sales CRM, Airtable teams rely on their own platform to build and manage their most critical business processes. This isn't just about using a few shared bases; it's about employees at all levels creating custom applications, interfaces, and automations to solve their unique challenges and streamline their day-to-day tasks.

Howie Liu, Airtable's co-founder and CEO, has emphasized the vision of creating a "radically faster and more intuitive way to build useful applications." (Source: [Airtable About Us](https://www.airtable.com/about)). This vision is constantly tested and validated by its own workforce. When an internal marketing team builds an Airtable app to manage a complex content calendar, or when the product team uses it to track feature roadmaps and user feedback, they are experiencing the platform exactly as a customer would. They encounter the same potential friction points and moments of delight, providing an invaluable, real-time feedback loop.

### AI Transformation: Starting From Within

Airtable's recent push into AI capabilities is a prime example of its internal-first approach. Before rolling out Airtable AI and tools like **Airtable Cobuilder** (which allows users to create apps in seconds using AI) to the public, these technologies were extensively used and refined internally.

In a [Salesforce Ventures interview](https://salesforceventures.com/perspectives/platform-evolution-in-the-ai-era-insights-from-airtable-ceo-howie-liu/), Howie Liu discussed "Starting AI Transformations From Within The Company." This involved internal hackathons where teams reimagined their work with AI and the appointment of "AI ambassadors" across departments to champion its use. Liu noted, "By definition, it's this flexible data schema that every customer can define their own business objects on top of... Every company decides their own use case." This flexibility is tested and proven by Airtable's own teams before it's expected of customers.

The aim, as highlighted in Airtable's [product development report](https://downloads.ctfassets.net/wl95ljfippl8/4akiSr2HsHSPWGIM0eJG1E/378f0d0c3d88b9d37f0eac86eafa56ea/2025_Airtable_Predictions_-_Product_in_the_era_of_AI.pdf), is to "infuse AI into their internal operation [and] deliver AI experiences into their products." When employees use Airtable AI to categorize customer feedback, generate product specs, summarize data, or even draft blog posts (as marketing teams might), they are directly contributing to the refinement of these AI features. Their successes and challenges inform the development of more intuitive prompting, more accurate outputs, and more useful AI-driven suggestions for all users. Some [user experiences shared on community forums](https://community.latenode.com/t/experiences-with-airtables-artificial-intelligence-features/14407) echo the kinds of productivity gains and learning curves internal teams would also navigate.

### How Internal Builders Shape a Better Platform

This deep "dogfooding" culture yields numerous benefits that directly impact the quality and usability of the Airtable platform:

* **User-Centric Design:** Because employees from diverse roles (not just engineers) are building apps, the platform is continuously evaluated for its ease of use by both technical and non-technical users. This fosters empathy and drives the development of truly intuitive interfaces and building blocks. The [Airtable Engineering Culture on Key Values](https://www.keyvalues.com/airtable) emphasizes "Bonded by Love for Product" and "Start-to-Finish Ownership," mindsets that thrive when using the product daily.
* **Rapid Identification of Pain Points:** If an internal team struggles to link records in a complex way, set up a nuanced automation, or design a clear interface for their specific needs, these pain points are immediately visible and can be addressed by the product and engineering teams.
* **Real-World Workflow Validation:** Airtable isn't just tested in hypothetical scenarios. It's used to manage real deadlines, track actual budgets, and collaborate on critical company initiatives. This ensures that features like **Views** (Grid, Calendar, Kanban, Gallery, Timeline, Gantt), **Automations**, and **Interface Designer** are robust and practical for a multitude of real-world applications (Source: [Airtable Platform Overview](https://www.airtable.com/platform), [Airtable Support Docs](https://support.airtable.com/docs/introduction-to-airtable-basics)).
* **Driving Feature Innovation:** Many of Airtable's powerful features, from its diverse field types to its integration capabilities and its ever-expanding library of extensions, are likely born out of needs first identified by internal teams pushing the limits of what they can build for their own operations.
* **Ensuring Scalability and Reliability:** As Airtable the company grows, so does the complexity of its internal operations. Using its own platform to manage this increasing scale provides crucial insights into performance, data capacity (with features like HyperDB aiming for 100M+ records, as mentioned on their [Project Management page](https://www.airtable.com/solutions/project-management)), and governance needs, ensuring the platform can support large enterprise customers.

### The "Builder" Culture Extends Inward

Airtable's leadership team often includes individuals who were power users and advocates of the platform even before joining the company. Anthony Maggio, Head of Product Management, is one such example (Source: [Airtable About Us](https://www.airtable.com/about)). This creates a virtuous cycle where those steering the product's direction have a profound, hands-on understanding of its strengths and potential.

The general benefits of "dogfooding," such as improved product quality, faster feedback cycles, and internal buy-in (as outlined by sources like [HeroCoders](https://www.herocoders.com/blog/dogfooding-in-software-development-eat-your-own-code) and [Mad Devs](https://maddevs.io/blog/dogfooding/)), are amplified in a company like Airtable, where the product itself is a tool for creation and operational management.

### Conclusion: Empowering Others by Empowering Themselves

Airtable's commitment to being its own most active and innovative user is a powerful strategy. By building and running their company on the same platform they offer to the world, they gain unparalleled insights into the needs of modern teams and the evolving landscape of work. This "Airtable on Airtable" approach ensures that every new feature, every UI refinement, and every AI-powered capability is not just theoretically sound but practically proven. It’s this deep, internal proving ground that allows Airtable to confidently empower its customers to build their own "next-gen apps" and transform their operations from the inside out—just as Airtable itself continues to do.

Building the Builder: How Airtable Uses Its Own Platform to Empower Everyone


In the fast-paced world of software development, the mantra "eat your own dog food" is a well-trodden path. For Asana, the popular work management platform, this isn't just a catchy phrase; it's a fundamental operational principle. By extensively using their own solution for a vast array of internal processes, Asana not only demonstrates confidence in their product but also gains invaluable, firsthand insights that continuously shape its evolution. This deep, internal reliance offers a compelling case study in how a company can leverage its own technology to drive innovation, enhance productivity, and even uncover areas for improvement.

At the heart of Asana's internal usage is, unsurprisingly, **product development**. The journey from a customer suggestion to a deployed feature is meticulously managed within Asana itself. As detailed in their own resources, Asana employs a "Voice of the Customer" program, systematically gathering feedback through various channels, including in-product prompts and direct interactions. This feedback isn't just collected; it's organized, categorized, and operationalized within Asana projects. "[By] innovating how we listen and respond to our customers...we can more effortlessly turn this feedback into action," Asana states on their blog ([Asana, "How Asana uses Work Management to Drive Product Development [2025]", asana.com](httpsana.com/resources/asana-on-asana-product-development)). Product teams utilize Asana for sprint planning, roadmap development, and tracking every stage from ideation to launch. They even leverage their own AI features to identify trends and prioritize customer requests, creating a dynamic loop where user needs directly fuel the product roadmap.

Beyond feature development, Asana entrusts its core **infrastructure and deployment processes** to its own platform. In a fascinating look "under the hood," Asana revealed how their deployment scripts interact with Asana tasks and projects ([Asana, "How we use Asana in our infrastructure", asana.com/inside-asana/using-asana-in-our-infrastructure](httpsana.com/inside-asana/using-asana-in-our-infrastructure)). For instance, they use Asana projects to manage and observe code pushes to their production and beta clusters. "Locks" for releases are represented as tasks, assignable to engineers, with discussions on resolution happening directly within the task's comments. This turns Asana into a dynamic, transparent UI for their deployment pipeline, a testament to the platform's flexibility.

This internal utilization extends to virtually every corner of the company. Asana is the go-to tool for:

* **Tracking all work:** From simple to-do lists to complex cross-functional projects.
* **Managing Areas of Responsibility (AoRs):** Ensuring clarity and accountability across the organization.
* **Reducing "work about work":** Minimizing time spent on status updates and searching for information, a core value proposition of the platform itself ([Ladders, "A look at work management company Asana", theladders.com](www.theladders.com/career-advice/workplace-software-company-asana)).
* **Internal communication and collaboration:** Replacing lengthy email chains with task-focused discussions.
* **Specific workflows:** Including bug tracking, applicant tracking for hiring, and managing customer feedback.
* **Goal setting:** The company's executive team sets business objectives within Asana, and individual teams and members align their key results accordingly, creating a clear hierarchy of goals ([Asana, "4 Organizational Planning Challenges and Solutions [2025]", asana.com/resources/organizational-planning-challenges](asana.com/resources/organizational-planning-challenges)).

Even significant internal projects, like a major **product redesign**, are navigated using Asana. Sam Goertler, a product manager at Asana, detailed how they took an iterative approach, breaking down the redesign into manageable parts, sequencing launches to optimize for learning, and validating assumptions early – all orchestrated within their own tool ([First Round Review, "Here's How Asana Won With Its Product Redesign", review.firstround.com](review.firstround.com/heres-how-asana-won-with-its-product-redesign)).

This pervasive internal use offers clear benefits. The most obvious is the continuous refinement of the product. Asana employees are arguably the platform's most critical users. Their daily experiences directly inform bug fixes, feature enhancements, and usability improvements. They feel the pain points first and are intrinsically motivated to find solutions. As Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz has emphasized, success often lies at "the intersection of luck and hard work" ([Asana, "39 Business Quotes to Empower Your Best Team [2025]", asana.com/resources/business-quotes](asana.com/resources/business-quotes)), and the hard work of building a better tool is amplified when your entire team relies on it.

However, this approach isn't without its own learning opportunities. Pushing a platform to its limits internally can also highlight areas where it might struggle. For example, discussions in the Asana community forums have pointed out challenges when projects accumulate an extremely large number of tasks (e.g., over 1000 tasks under a collapsed section), potentially leading to performance issues ([Asana Community Forum, "Asana stops working properly in projects with more than ~1000 tasks hidden under collapsed sectionst", forum.asana.com](forum.asana.com/t/asana-stops-working-properly-in-projects-with-more-than-1000-tasks-hidden-under-collapsed-sectionst/187950)). While such scenarios might represent edge cases for many users, for a company like Asana, encountering these limitations internally provides a direct incentive to engineer more robust solutions that benefit the entire user base. It's a feedback loop that goes beyond typical bug reporting; it's about experiencing the product's boundaries in real-world, high-stakes scenarios.

Furthermore, the very challenges Asana aims to solve for its customers—like coordinating plans across departments and avoiding "collaborative overload"—are ones they navigate internally. By creating predefined planning processes and centralizing coordination within their own tool, they not only streamline their operations but also develop best practices they can share with their users.

In conclusion, Asana's commitment to using its own platform is more than just a marketing strategy. It's a core element of their product philosophy and operational DNA. It allows them to build with empathy, innovate based on direct experience, and continuously refine a tool that empowers teams worldwide. While the journey of self-hosting a critical business application can sometimes reveal its limitations, for Asana, these moments appear to be valuable opportunities for growth, ensuring the platform evolves to meet the increasingly complex demands of modern work.

Articles tagged with "Collaboration"

Building the Builder: How Airtable Uses Its Own Platform to Empower Everyone

Built on Asana: How Asana Uses Its Own Platform to Drive Innovation and Efficiency