From side project to 20k+ signups with an open-source Airtable alternative. AMA!
I started Baserow as a side project early 2019 and was working on it in the evening and weekends. The first version of Baserow was publicly launched in May 2020. People loved the idea, and I switched to part-time freelancing and started investing more time in Baserow. In January 2021, I started working on Baserow full-time and hired the first team members. Now Baserow is a team of more than 10 people, we raised a €5m seed round, were featured on TechCrunch, #1 on Hacker News and hit over 20,000 signups in the hosted version.
Why Baserow is open source?
I believe using an open development model helps us create more stable and secure technologies. While using no-code databases like Airtable, you will notice that most of them do not offer extensibility and scalability. Now you might argue that many no-code tools have an app store with API extensions or pre-integrated apps, which is true. The real extensibility though comes from the ability to modify the source code and build the specific plugins your team needs, today and in the future. That requires fully transparent, developer-friendly openness. Which Baserow offers by being open-source.
I’m an open source advocate myself, some of the Baserow team members were our open source contributors whom we hired, and we back up our belief by actively using open source software like GitLab, Sentry, Visual Studio Code, Git, Discourse, Weblate, Proton mail, etc. We are also sponsors of Django and plan on supporting other open source projects as well.
To sum up everything, here are the benefits of being an open source.
For us: collaborative effort of multiple developers and communities help us to find a solution a lot faster.
For our clients: having an open-source model prevent vendor lock-in because they have access to the source code and can host on their own servers. This is something that's increasingly important as the no-code tools we create are built to scale.
I know how challenging it may be to run an open source project and handle between free and paid versions. I hope my experience can save some time and money for other business owners, so today I’m more than happy to answer all your questions about the open source aspect of Baserow. Let’s get it started 🚀
How would you describe a no-code database? That concept doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I've struggled to understand it. Is anyone essentially able to make queries without any tech knowledge?
With a no-code database, anyone can basically create a relational database in a simple way. The interface looks a bit like a spreadsheet because some people are already familiar with those kind of tools. Every column can only support a specific type, think of "a number with two decimal places" to make it more structured. You can construct queries by creating filters and sorts on your data.
congratulations! i have been tracking your progress since it was launched in HN and than later when you got selected in YC, i thought now opensource will be abandoned but surprisingly it continued with even better speed :-)
What is your free user to paying user ratio? Do you have enterprise customers as well? if yes how did you got them?
It's difficult to say what the ratio between free and paying users is because most of our users are self hosting. We're not sending any telemetry about self hosted users to our servers because of privacy reasons. Our enterprise plan is not live yet, but we're speaking with several companies at the moment. Some reached out to us and we also contacted active hosted users and paying users.
Well done. A few questions. How do you get others developers to join you and develop for "free" when you are making money from the hosted version and are a commercial business so to speak. Did I get that right or is the code open source and the developers are all paid developers.
How do you insure the quality of the code being submitted to the project.
I am at a point with fabform.io now that I am seriously considering making it open source, hence the questions.
Would I need to raise money to pay developers to work on the open source software or could i find volunteers?
Almost every person who works on something full time, needs a financial compensation to cover their living expenses. It wouldn't be right to recruit people without any form of compensation. If you've raised money or generating revenue, you could pay a financial compensation. If you haven't raised and are pre-revenue, you might be able to find someone who's willing to commit full time in exchange for a percentage of your (future) company.
There might also be junior people who like to contribute to open source projects part time to improve their skills. This could be beneficial to them if you're a experienced in a topic yourself and are willing to give guidance and feedback.
Every developer on the team is being paid to work full time on Baserow. Currently, we're a team of 6.5 developers, I'm the 0.5 because I'm spending about 50% of my time on writing code. We're not recruiting for "free" open source contributors. The contributions that are being made are usually small and from users who are solving a problem they're having while using Baserow themself. In return, we sometimes give free access to the premium version. Every contribution will be reviewed by one off the full time team members to ensure the quality.
How hard was it to raise money in the current climate?
What pointers could you give me as I want to do the same for fabform.io
To be honest, it was not difficult. I originally wanted to bootstrap, so I build the project and gained visible traction. After that, investors started reaching out. There are still lots of investors actively investing at the moment. I would recommend finding investors that have invested in other open source projects if that's the path you want take. Or ideally, you create enough traction that investors reach out to you.
Have to say...your website is really awesome. Did you do it all yourself or did your team members work on it? How did you all go about building it?
Thanks @th3marine! To be honest, the website is actually a bit "old". I've designed the first version myself using Adobe XD, wrote the html/css code and then implement it. This was more than two years ago, since then I've added more pages and changes of course. The team now helps me with design, content, etc.
Even though my background is mainly in software engineering, I've also learned about UX/UI design, frontend development and devops as well. The pages on baserow.io are actually a plugin on top of the open source version of Baserow. Because of this we didn't have to split the app to a separate subdomain.
Has this ever backfired? I'm concerned about open sourcing my product specifically because I'm not sure I can trust folks to just run with my code and not credit me.
It has never backfired for us. What are you worried about specifically when open sourcing your product?
I'm familiar with nocodb and have used it before, do you see Baserow as a competitor? And how does the speed of Baserow compare to the speed of nocodb, it's not a big priority for me, but something I'm considering when making a choice between Baserow/Nocodb/Airtable
Baserow and NocoDB both profile themself as an open source Airtable alternative, but there are many differences. Baserow is a turn-key solution that can be used by tech and non-tech people, where no-code is more focused on technical users. In terms of features, Baserow has templates, kanban view, token permissions, real time collaboration, trash bin, aggregations, row coloring, snapshots, duplication, drag and drop ordering, undo-redo, form conditions, supports plugins, multiple cell selection, rich file preview and some more features that NocoDB doesn't have. On the other hand, NocoDB is created to connect to an existing technical relational database engine. Both have a different software license.
It depends a bit on your requirements which tool you should choose. I also recommend to try out both tools and then make a decision.
I've done some import comparisons a while ago and if you for example import a CSV file with 6k rows and with 14 fields it takes about 7s in the hosted version of Baserow and 80s on Heroku hosted NocoDB.
I've answered this question in our community at the beginning of the year here: https://community.baserow.io/t/nocodedb-vs-baserow/207/2. Many things have changed in both tools of course, but it might give you some more information.
Well done @bramw and team!
Just letting you know the price table has a spelling mistake ("lates" should be "latest")
Receive the lates updates automatically
Thank you for pointing that out! We'll fix is asap.
nice story and congrats for your product! a couple of questions:
Checking out Baserow now and was thinking....am I crazy for thinking that it's possible for me to make a multi tenant web app with Baserow as the database? Or is there something I'm missing.
If so, I need to create an account ASAP and get to work.
It depends a bit on your use-case, but it's possible to use Baserow as the database of your multi tenant web app. Currently Baserow only provides the database part, but we're going to work on app building functionality as well in the future.