2023年2月10日

Airtable在2021年底獲得了110億美元的巨額估值，吸引了一大批雄心勃勃的企業家進入低代碼數據庫領域。他們甚至隻想從擁有十年曆史的美國巨頭那裏分得一小塊蛋糕。盡管SaaS在美國、新興市場、甚至在中國蓬勃發展的科技行業早已成為一種成熟的商業模式，但許多用戶仍然希望軟件是免費的。為了增加付費客戶，由經驗豐富、價格合理的開發者創建的亞洲SaaS初創公司正在進軍西方市場。總部位於香港的低代碼數據庫APITable就是其中之一(它正在建立一個加拿大基地)。該公司毫不掩飾其挑戰Airtable的野心。舉個例子，它的博客上有一個關於如何從Airtable遷移到自己平台的分步指南(該頁麵在發布時消失了)。APITable正在與阿姆斯特丹的Baserow和舊金山的NocoDB等少數新興創業公司競爭，為創建智能、外觀流暢的數據庫提供開源、可視化的解決方案。它的名字暗示了對係統互操作性的關注。該公司聯合創始人兼首席運營官Gary Li在接受采訪時表示，在未來，用戶將能夠使用APITable API將低代碼工具連接到Zapier、Slack、穀歌Workspace和熱門ChatGPT等平台。 For users wanting an off-the-shelf product that requires minimum technical skills and third-party hosting, the software comes with a paid, premium version. As of today, APITable has been “starred” some 6,500 times on GitHub , an indicator of a project’s popularity amongst developers. While Li declines to disclose the company’s revenue size, he claims that in 2022, “organization users”, including freemium and paid ones, grew from 6,000 to over 20,000 across 30 countries. APITable’s founding team first tested the water in China. Its Chinese version Vika launched in 2019 at a time when venture capitalists, buoyed by the boom of Zoom, Stripe, Canva, Figma, Airtable and other cloud-based solutions in the West, were rushing to bet on local alternatives. APITable itself landed funding from prominent VCs like IDG Capital, GL Ventures (Hillhouse’s early-stage arm) and 5Y Capital, which is considered by some as a bellwether in enterprise tech investment in China. The startup had raised $10 million in total funding as of early 2021 at a valuation of roughly $75 million. Back in China, Vika has had no shortage of rivals. Companies from giants like ByteDance and Tencent to underdogs like Hipacloud and Treelab clamored to build their answers to Airtable. Looking forward, the parent firm will place more focus on expansion in the West through APITable. “Being open-source is a way of marketing itself. To generate revenues, though, we still depend on Saas sales,” reckons Li. APITable’s CEO Kelly Chan seems to know a thing or two about creating tools for non-technical users. He was previously the CTO at HeyTea, a venture-backed company that revolutionized the bubble tea business in China. The chain not only pioneered the novel cheese-on-the-top flavor but more importantly, it invested heavily in a sizable developer team, a rather unusual move in the food and beverage industry. The results were reassuring. Under Chan’s helm , HeyTea made an app to speed up ordering and shorten wait time as well as boost recurring revenue through a membership scheme.