Long-Term Vision and Planning at AirTable. OKR

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AirTable focuses on long-term planning by having a three-year vision for the product broken down into yearly segments and quarterly OKRs for teams, starting with customer value. The company balances day-to-day execution with the broader vision, setting flags for the next three to five years. The executive team ensures deliberate space for long-term thinking while addressing customer issues on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Todd Jackson’s filling in as host again this week. (As a reminder, he’s hosting a few product-focused episodes this season — all about finding product-market fit.)

Today, Todd chats with Andrew Ofstad, co-founder of Airtable. In our conversation, we go deep into Airtable’s early days, and how they navigated the journey of finding traction and scaling.

Here’s a preview of what Todd and Andrew cover:

How the founders came together, their vision for the product, and what the initial prototypes looked like.

Airtable’s alpha, beta, and launch timelines, as well as their early traction.

The challenges of creating a horizontal product that can do many things, including identifying initial use cases and figuring out how to describe what they were building.

How to approach pricing and competition, as well as their early go-to-market strategy.

What the next 3 years will look like for Airtable, and how they’ve navigated scaling while staying true to their vision.

Whether you’re a founder validating your own idea, or a product leader looking for growth advice, there are tons of tactics here that go much deeper than the typical founding stories you hear.

You can follow Andrew on Twitter at @aofstad. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @tjack.