Motorola’s next member of the One family is going to be the Moto One Hyper. The device was first leaked a few months ago but has now passed through NBTC, implying a launch very soon.
Earlier this year, Motorola brought a new naming scheme for its smartphones, by bringing them under the ‘Moto One’ canopy, with each of them specializing in different aspects. The Moto One Hyper will be the latest addition to the family, with a 64MP camera module along with a pop-up selfie camera for a notch-less front.
(Image credit: NBTC)
Moto One Hyper specifications
Leaks suggest that the Moto One Hyper, just like other phones from Motorola recently, is a mid-ranger powered by a Snapdragon 675 chipset with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
The front will sport a 6.39-inch IPS LCD panel with a Full HD+ resolution and will have no notch or holes for the selfie camera. The 32MP front camera will reside in a housing that will pop-up from the top edge when needed.
The back of the Moto One Hyper will house a 64MP primary camera, likely to be the Bright GW1 image sensor from Samsung along with an 8MP depth sensor. There’s also a physical fingerprint scanner under the cameras.
The entire package is powered by a 3,600 mAh battery and is expected to bring fast charging over USB Type-C as well. The bottom also has a headphone jack.
(Image credit: ProAndroid)
Motorola is yet to confirm a launch date for the One Hyper but has only one event on the horizon on November 13, where the next-gen Moto Razr foldable will be unveiled. We could hear more about the Hyper at the same event.
After rolling out the Payload mode through the recent 0.15.0 update, Tencent is gearing up to introduce Season 10 of the Royale Pass in PUBG Mobile. The next season is scheduled to begin from November 10, as the ongoing season concludes on November 9.
Now, according to the various leaks and rumors, the upcoming Season 10 of the Royale Pass will add more missions and items for players to unlock throughout the season. The theme of Season 10 will be Fury of the Wasteland. Gamers can also purchase the Elite & Elite Plus passes for access to more in-game items by spending 600UC and 1800UC, respectively.
PUBG Mobile Season 10: What’s new
The theme of the upcoming season is Fury of the Wasteland, and the developers are offering desert-themed weapons and clothing. Popular weapons like the M249, M416, and even the Pan are being provided with desert-themed skins. Besides, there are new skins for parachutes, new emotes, and complementing avatar frames.
A few of the leaked costumes include Desert Trooper set, Irradiated Frog set, Apocalypse Guardian set, among others.
Zima is an off-road vehicle that will be making its way onto the Vikendi map as it has been crafted to handle the snow-clad areas of the plan. The vehicle has a four-wheel drive with a top speed of 115 km/h and can house a squad. It replaces UAZ on Vikendi though its tires aren’t bulletproof.
With the upcoming update, the devs likely introduce a new Team Deathmatch mode called The Ruins. Also, the battle royale game is set to receive a new weapon– MP5K, which is a sub-machine gun exclusive to Vikendi and replaces Vector on the map. The MP5K uses 9mm ammo and has a hit damage rate of 33. It has been designed for close-quarter combats.
With so many great 4K televisions to choose from, making a decision about which one to purchase for your family may very well come down to price. A good cheap 4K TV deal can be hard to refuse, and these days there are more great TVs at even better prices than ever before.
If you need a new television and don’t want to pay any more than you have to, why not take a look at our curated list of the best cheap 4K TV deals in Australia for November 2019.
We’ve been on the prowl for the best value 4K Ultra HD TVs currently on sale, focusing on sets with huge discounts off the RRP. With so much 4K content currently available to stream on Netflix, Amazon and Stan, now’s the perfect time to upgrade to an Ultra HD set. And at these prices, can you even afford not to?
Below, you’ll find our selection of the best cheap 4K TV deals for the month of October. You better get a move on, though – some of these deals are time sensitive, and may disappear before the end of the month. Now, let’s kick off our list with our deal of the month.
You can’t go wrong with a Samsung’s QLED TV, and this 55-incher is an exceptional one. If you’ve been waiting for the price of QLED to come down, you’re in luck – David Jones has a massive AU$950 discount on Samsung’s 55-inch Q60 telly, bringing its price down from $2,299 to just $1,349! We recommend jumping on this.View Deal
LG’s phenomenal 55-inch C9 OLED television can now be picked up for as little as $2,915 from retailer 13IT, which is not quite as cheap as its been in the past, but still a good price. This 4K beauty offers infinite contrast for perfect blacks, along with HDR10/Dolby Vision support and AI ThinQ technology.View Deal
Interested in a QLED television but don’t want to pay a hefty amount? Even cheaper than last month, this deal for Samsung’s 65-Inch Q6 Series QLED TV may be what you’ve been waiting for. Featuring a 200Hz refresh rate and V-sync compatibility, it’s a terrific option for users who want a big TV to game on. Was $2,999 – now $2,290 (that’s a saving for $1,114).View Deal
If you’re looking for an enormous smart TV with Google Assistant built in that’s also inexpensive, you’ve come to the right place. LG’s 70-inch ThinQ 70UM7300PTA television boasts Ultra HD resolution images with webOS smart functionality that will allow you to stream Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and more. Was $2,459, now $1,490 (that’s a saving of $969).View Deal
The best deals on our favourite 4K TVs
Perhaps you’re not after a cheap TV, but simply want a good deal on a top of the line telly. In that case, check out some great deals for our current favourite 4K televisions below.
More 4K smart TV deals
The televisions listed above are but a small selection of the TV deals available online, with loads of sets in various sizes and brands reduced every day. If the TVs above don’t suit your needs or fit your price range, you can check out even more cheap 4K TV deals at Getprice.
It’s the race that stops a nation, with the host state of Victoria celebrating a public holiday on race day each year. In the lead up, though, women would have found the best fascinators and dresses, while the men would have dusted off their best suit. Everyone else would be getting ready to party the afternoon and evening away.
All this effort goes into enjoying three-and-a-half minutes of speed, drama and the heated relationship between horse and jockey.
While many would have tried to physically get to Melbourne’s famous Flemington Racecourse on race day, not everyone can do so. Those who can’t need not fret as, like previous years, you can keep up with the horses on TV. In fact, if your office isn’t equipped with a telly, you can stream Melbourne Cup 2019 on your computer or your mobile.
What is the Melbourne Cup?
For the uninitiated, the Cup is Australia’s most prestigious – and richest – ‘two mile’ handicap race for thoroughbreds aged three-year-old and over. The event is part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival that was first held way back in 1861.
While it’s still referred to as a ‘two-mile’ handicap race, that’s not the actual distance the horses gallop. It was originally run over a distance of two miles (3.219km) but was shortened to 3.2km in 1972 when Australia adopted the metric system.
Winners of the Melbourne Cup have always pocketed a hefty bag of prize money and trophies that cost a pretty penny too, and that purse just keeps growing each year. In 2018, the prize money was a whopping AU$7.3 million, over a million dollars more than 2017. That purse was taken by a young thoroughbred gelding from the UK called Cross Counter.
The 2019 purse is higher still, weighing in at AU$8 million, meaning the stakes are at an all-time high
Like last year, it’s a 24-horse field again in the main event in 2019, with Mer de Glace and Cross Counter being the bookies’ hot favourites.
For stat fans, a Bart Cummings-trained horse called Kingston Rule famously smashed the record time back in 1990 with a 3 minutes and 16 seconds finish. Will that record be broken in 2019?
When is the Melbourne Cup?
The Melbourne Cup is always held on the first Tuesday of November each year. That means this year, the race that brings a nation to a halt will be held on Tuesday, November 5.
While Victoria enjoys a public holiday on the day, most Aussies around the nation drop whatever they’re doing and become horse racing experts for an entire afternoon.
The race begins at 3pm AEST, so Queenslanders will need to tune in at 2pm, while South Australia and Western Australia can set an alarm for 2:30pm and 12pm respectively.
How to watch the Cup on TV in Australia
While the Seven Network has held the broadcasting rights for the Melbourne Cup for 15 years, there’s a change in 2019. This year, Network Ten takes over with race-day broadcast beginning on Channel 10 at 10am AEDT, and will include interviews and all nine races.
That said, Seven Network-owned Racing.com will broadcast the race on channel 78 (for metropolitan areas) and channel 68 (for digital). Racing.com is also available on Foxtel on channel 529.
If you do have a Foxtel subscription, the Cup will also be broadcast live on Sky Racing 1 (channel 526).
Live stream the Melbourne Cup in Australia
If you find the Melbourne Cup captivating but can’t get to a telly that arvo, there are quite a few options for live streaming the event in Australia.
The easiest is to watch the broadcast on Ten’s online platform –Tenplay – which is available on desktop and on mobile. The races can also be watched live on Racing.com’s own site, although this service requires you to set up an account.
Another option is to catch the Cup on bookmaking sites. Many betting sites – like SportsBet, CrownBet and Ladbrokes – offer free live streams during Melbourne Cup, but you will need to create a user account to use their services. And if you are planning on placing bets during the Cup, please remember to gamble responsibly.
While it might be tempting to watch the Melbourne Cup races for free, there are other ways to live stream the event, but requires a paid subscription. As we mentioned earlier, Sky Racing and Racing.com on a Foxtel sports package will let you stream the main event live, as will Kayo Sports – a relatively new sports streaming service that mirrors most of the content on Fox Sports.
Kayo’s Basic plan lets you stream sports across two devices simultaneously, with no lock-in contract. If you decide you want to stream to more devices at a later date, you can upgrade to the Premium package below for an additional $10 per month.View Deal
The Premium package lets you stream all the sports you want across three devices with no lock-in contract. It’s the same content as the Basic package, with the same image quality. Sign up now.View Deal
It’s the race that stops a nation, with the host state of Victoria celebrating a public holiday on race day each year. In the lead up, though, women would have found the best fascinators and dresses, while the men would have dusted off their best suit. Everyone else would be getting ready to party the afternoon and evening away.
All this effort goes into enjoying three-and-a-half minutes of speed, drama and the heated relationship between horse and jockey.
While many would have tried to physically get to Melbourne’s famous Flemington Racecourse on race day, not everyone can do so. Those who can’t need not fret as, like previous years, you can keep up with the horses on TV. In fact, if your office isn’t equipped with a telly, you can stream Melbourne Cup 2019 on your computer or your mobile.
What is the Melbourne Cup?
For the uninitiated, the Cup is Australia’s most prestigious – and richest – ‘two mile’ handicap race for thoroughbreds aged three-year-old and over. The event is part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival that was first held way back in 1861.
While it’s still referred to as a ‘two-mile’ handicap race, that’s not the actual distance the horses gallop. It was originally run over a distance of two miles (3.219km) but was shortened to 3.2km in 1972 when Australia adopted the metric system.
Winners of the Melbourne Cup have always pocketed a hefty bag of prize money and trophies that cost a pretty penny too, and that purse just keeps growing each year. In 2018, the prize money was a whopping AU$7.3 million, over a million dollars more than 2017. That purse was taken by a young thoroughbred gelding from the UK called Cross Counter.
The 2019 purse is higher still, weighing in at AU$8 million, meaning the stakes are at an all-time high
Like last year, it’s a 24-horse field again in the main event in 2019, with Mer de Glace and Cross Counter being the bookies’ hot favourites.
For stat fans, a Bart Cummings-trained horse called Kingston Rule famously smashed the record time back in 1990 with a 3 minutes and 16 seconds finish. Will that record be broken in 2019?
When is the Melbourne Cup?
The Melbourne Cup is always held on the first Tuesday of November each year. That means this year, the race that brings a nation to a halt will be held on Tuesday, November 5.
While Victoria enjoys a public holiday on the day, most Aussies around the nation drop whatever they’re doing and become horse racing experts for an entire afternoon.
The race begins at 3pm AEST, so Queenslanders will need to tune in at 2pm, while South Australia and Western Australia can set an alarm for 2:30pm and 12pm respectively.
How to watch the Cup on TV in Australia
While the Seven Network has held the broadcasting rights for the Melbourne Cup for 15 years, there’s a change in 2019. This year, Network Ten takes over with race-day broadcast beginning on Channel 10 at 10am AEDT, and will include interviews and all nine races.
That said, Seven Network-owned Racing.com will broadcast the race on channel 78 (for metropolitan areas) and channel 68 (for digital). Racing.com is also available on Foxtel on channel 529.
If you do have a Foxtel subscription, the Cup will also be broadcast live on Sky Racing 1 (channel 526).
Live stream the Melbourne Cup in Australia
If you find the Melbourne Cup captivating but can’t get to a telly that arvo, there are quite a few options for live streaming the event in Australia.
The easiest is to watch the broadcast on Ten’s online platform –Tenplay – which is available on desktop and on mobile. The races can also be watched live on Racing.com’s own site, although this service requires you to set up an account.
Another option is to catch the Cup on bookmaking sites. Many betting sites – like SportsBet, CrownBet and Ladbrokes – offer free live streams during Melbourne Cup, but you will need to create a user account to use their services. And if you are planning on placing bets during the Cup, please remember to gamble responsibly.
While it might be tempting to watch the Melbourne Cup races for free, there are other ways to live stream the event, but requires a paid subscription. As we mentioned earlier, Sky Racing and Racing.com on a Foxtel sports package will let you stream the main event live, as will Kayo Sports – a relatively new sports streaming service that mirrors most of the content on Fox Sports.
Kayo’s Basic plan lets you stream sports across two devices simultaneously, with no lock-in contract. If you decide you want to stream to more devices at a later date, you can upgrade to the Premium package below for an additional $10 per month.View Deal
The Premium package lets you stream all the sports you want across three devices with no lock-in contract. It’s the same content as the Basic package, with the same image quality. Sign up now.View Deal
As the number of shows and movies available to stream in Australia continues to grow at an impressive rate, it can be tough to keep up with all the new additions to each streaming service each month.
We’ve all come to anticipate a new stable of Netflix Originals releases each month, but figuring out which shows they are and when exactly they become available isn’t so easy. And what about the large number licensed shows and films that are made available to stream, if only for a limited time?
In an effort to keep you informed of the best shows and movies that are in the process of being added to Netflix, we’ll be bringing you an updated list of what you can expect on the service on a monthly basis.
Not only that, we’ll also be singling out the biggest releases, as well as a number of quality TV shows and films which we believe deserve your Netflixing time.
So get ready to kick off the month with an epic binge – here’s what’s new on Netflix in November 2019. Check out Netflix’s newest offerings in the video below!
In this surprise treat for fans that proves language and culture are no barrier, the Fab 5 has taken its show over to Tokyo, Japan! Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! sees Antoni Porowski (Food & Wine), Bobby Berk (Interior Design), Jonathan Van Ness (Grooming), Karamo Brown (Culture), and Tan France (Fashion) enter the lives of four Japanese people who aren’t comfortable in their own skin, only to completely turn their lives around for the better! Make sure you have some tissues handy, because these four episodes are guaranteed to make you cry. But don’t worry – you’ll end up crying tears of joy by the end!
A surprise hit from a couple years ago, Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World introduced the world to a new pair of teenage misfits in the mold of True Romance’s Clarence and Alabama or Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers. Now, the series is back for a second season, picking up right after the cross-country bloodbath caused by James (Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Jessica Barden) in season one was brought to a violent end. With james now out of her life, Alyssa has returned to the unhappy place she was at originally, and though we don’t know what will happen in season two, it seems like she’s being made to marry someone she doesn’t love. Yeah, we don’t think she’ll go along with that, either.
We can’t get enough of Netflix’s fantastic documentary series, The Toys That Made Us, and it seems like the third season of the nostalgia-based show is going to be its best yet! This season, we’ll be getting a look into the stories behind the toys for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, My Little Pony and wrestling!
Love the nostalgia-fueled fun of The Toys That Made Us? Well, you’re in luck, because a new series from the same makers is also arriving on Netflix this month, only this one focuses on the classic movies that we grew up on! Season one of The Movies That Made Us will take us behind the scenes on four classic films: Ghostbusters, Die Hard, Dirty Dancing and Home Alone. We can’t wait!
Netflix’s most high-profile Original film is almost upon us, with director Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman taking us on a multi-decade journey in the mob-affiliated career of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), including his possible involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Budgeted at over $150 million, the film employs cutting edge de-aging effects to show De Niro at various points in his life over a 50-year period. Also starring Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Anna Paquin, Harvey Keitel and Bobby Cannavale, The Irishman may end up being the final gangster film of Scorsese’s incredible career. Simply put, The Irishman is an event not to be missed by any self-respecting film fan.
…and the rest for November
ORIGINAL SERIES
Atypical: Season 3 (01/11/2019)
Hache (01/11/2019)
We Are the Wave (01/11/2019)
Greenleaf: Season 4 (06/11/2019)
SCAMS (06/11/2019)
Busted!: Season 2 (08/11/2019)
Greatest Events of WWII in HD Colour (08/11/2019)
Green Eggs and Ham (08/11/2019)
Little Things: Season 3 (09/11/2019)
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj: Volume 5 (10/11/2019)
The Stranded (14/11/2019)
Avlu: Part 2 (15/11/2019)
I’m with the Band: Nasty Cherry (15/11/2019)
The Club (15/11/2019)
The Crown: Season 3 (17/11/2019)
Mortel (21/11/2019)
Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings (22/11/2019)
High Seas: Season 2 (22/11/2019)
Nailed It! Holiday!: Season 2 (22/11/2019)
Narcoworld: Dope Stories (22/11/2019)
Nobody’s Looking (22/11/2019)
Singapore Social (22/11/2019)
Final Space: Season 2 (24/11/2019)
Merry Happy Whatever (28/11/2019)
Lugar de Mulher (28/11/2019)
Mytho (28/11/2019)
Sugar Rush Christmas (29/11/2019)
NETFLIX TELEVISION EVENT
American Son (01/11/2019)
NETFLIX FILM
Drive (01/11/2019)
Holiday in the Wild (01/11/2019)
The King (01/11/2019)
The Man Without Gravity (01/11/2019)
Tune in for Love (05/11/2019)
Paradise Beach (08/11/2019)
Let It Snow (08/11/2019)
House Arrest (15/11/2019)
Klaus (15/11/2019)
Earthquake Bird (15/11/2019)
The Knight Before Christmas (21/11/2019)
Mon frère (22/11/2019)
The Irishman (27/11/2019)
Holiday Rush (28/11/2019)
Atlantics (29/11/2019)
I Lost My Body (29/11/2019)
ORIGINAL COMEDY
Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby (05/11/2019)
Jeff Garlin: Our Man In Chicago (12/11/2019)
Fadily Camara: La Plus Drôle de Tes Copines (14/11/2019)
Iliza: Unveiled (19/11/2019)
Zona Rosa (26/11/2019).
Mike Birbiglia: The New One (26/11/2019)
John Crist: I Ain’t Prayin For That (28/11/2019)
ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY
Fire in Paradise (01/11/2019)
The Devil Next Door (04/11/2019)
Maradona in Mexico (13/11/2019)
No hay tiempo para la verguenza (19/11/2019)
Lorena, la de pies ligeros (20/11/2019)
Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator (20/11/2019)
Broken (27/11/2019)
KIDS & FAMILY
Hello Ninja (01/11/2019)
True: Grabbleapple Harvest (01/11/2019)
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Season 4 (05/11/2019)
Harvey Girls Forever!: Season 3 (12/11/2019)
GO!: The Unforgettable Party (15/11/2019)
Llama Llama: Season 2 (15/11/2019)
Dino Girl Gauko (22/11/2019)
The Dragon Prince: Season 3 (22/11/2019)
Trolls: The Beat Goes On!: Season 8 (22/11/2019)
Super Monsters Save Christmas (26/11/2019)
True: Winter Wishes (26/11/2019)
Chip and Potato: Season 2 (29/11/2019)
ORIGINAL ANIME
Levius (Coming Soon)
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
The Last Samurai (01/11/2019)
Pacific Rim: Uprising (04/11/2019)
Outlander: Season 4 (05/11/2019)
Fifty Shades Freed (09/11/2019)
Seven (15/11/2019)
Going for Gold (01/11/2019)
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Best Gift Ever (01/11/2019)
The BBC’s weekly The Boss series profiles different business leaders from around the world. This week we speak to Howie Liu, the founder and chief executive of the fast-growing spreadsheet start-up AirTable.
Silicon Valley boss Howard Liu is sitting, he believes, on an idea that could earn tens of billions of dollars. And with any luck, he tells the BBC, his company AirTable will be the one to execute it.
“It’s a profoundly large opportunity, not unlike the scale of Amazon, or Facebook, or Google,” he says without irony.
“I just think there’s this sea change that’s going to happen in terms of how people can interact with software.”
The big idea? Spreadsheets, but better. Spreadsheets, but richer.
Spreadsheets are commonly used by professionals such as accountants to sort data, produce charts and do sums. But most of us find them too technical to use in anything but a basic way.
AirTable changes that, says Mr Liu, making it so easy that people who typically don’t have coding skills – like cattle farmers – can set up complex cloud systems for what they do, such as keeping track of cows and equipment.
‘Eyes glazed over’
The app has become a runaway success, attracting high profile customers such as entertainment company Netflix, electric carmaker Tesla and the magazine and website Time.
The company is also worth $1.1bn (£850m), based on its latest funding round, despite having only having a product on the market for four years.
Explaining the concept to investors was difficult in the company’s early days, admits Mr Liu, who co-founded the business in 2012 and is also AirTable’s chief executive. It didn’t exactly sound like an entirely new idea.
“The concept of a spreadsheet predates even computing. Spreadsheets were the first killer app.”
And so, when he and his partners went into investor meetings armed with their “pitch deck”, they offered very little of what investors typically expected to hear.
“You see all these pitch decks out there that show a chart of growth, and market size, and all that kind of stuff. Ours looked nothing like that.”
Instead they made a philosophical case for AirTable and how it could transform the world of work.
“Honestly, I think a lot of eyes just glazed over. I distinctly remember a few cases, even with the investors that said yes, where they said ‘we don’t really get what you’re talking about’.”
Ultimately, what got those investors on board was confidence in the AirTable team itself, which Mr Liu says was perhaps of more importance at such an early stage.
“There are many ways for a great idea with a bad team to fail, whereas even an unknown idea with a great team can succeed.”
‘I thought we were Chinese?’
Mr Liu grew up in College Station, Texas, “two hours away from Houston and three hours away from Dallas”.
He jokes that his family background is so complicated his mother didn’t even try to explain it to him until he was around 10 years old.
“All four of my grandparents were Korean,” he says. “But during the Second World War they moved, as many Koreans did, to China. My parents were both born in China, but moved to the States before I was born.”
His parents thought he would be “too confused” by that kind of story, and it wasn’t until he had to do a family history essay for school that it was explained to him.
“I interviewed my grandparents and I remember being like ‘wait a second, I thought we were Chinese?’ I was super confused.”
Less confusing was learning to code. Aged 13, Mr Liu picked up one of his dad’s books on C++, the programming language, and taught himself in a matter of weeks.
At just 16, he began studying computational airfoil design at Duke University in North Carolina. It was here that he met his eventual AirTable co-founders, Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas, although the three wouldn’t work together until later on in their lives.
Mr Liu’s first business was Etacts, a customer relationship management (CRM) company. It was bought by software giant Salesforce in 2011 for an undisclosed sum.
The sale gave Mr Liu the luxury of financial security when starting up AirTable, but the acquisition, he reflects, left him feeling somewhat hollow.
“I ended up being very fortunate to have this life-changing financial outcome,” he says. “But it was a failure in the sense that we never actually built a real business, an organisation with its own culture.”
It did, however, get him in the room with powerful people when he needed backing for AirTable – people like Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce and one of the most influential men in the tech industry.
He wasn’t sold on Mr Liu’s idea, and suggested they instead put their effort into creating a better way of gathering electronic medical records. They ignored his advice.
“It wasn’t like we arrogantly thought we knew better,” Mr Liu remembers. “Marc was extremely generous with his time and advice. He was doing us a huge favour.”
The San Francisco-based firm still only has around 80,000 business customers but that figure is growing. A plethora of other famous users are helping to spread the word, although the firm has found popularity among far smaller enterprises too, particularly non-profit organisations.
When Hurricane Harvey battered Texas and Louisiana in 2017, AirTable was used to log rescued pets and reunite them with their owners. The site has a free plan, with limited functionality and capacity, and paid monthly plans for small businesses.
The success makes AirTable, quite comfortably, a “unicorn” – the nickname for privately held companies valued at more than a billion dollars. It’s a status symbol most in San Francisco strive for – but Mr Liu winces at the term.
“It just viscerally feels… cheesy. I think it’s a label that has unnecessary or artificial gravitas.”
He feels too many start-ups, particularly in show-offish San Francisco, use the “meaningless” unicorn tag to make themselves appear bigger and more impressive than is justified.
“In the short term, you can fake it. But if you focus so much on what others think of you, you don’t focus on the right things. In the long-term, what really matters are your business fundamentals.”
Alex Wilhelm, editor in chief of investment-tracking website Crunchbase, cites several factors in AirTable’s appeal.
“AirTable hits on a few trends that venture capitalists are currently excited about,” he says.
“It touches on the idea that consumers are becoming more willing today to pay a small fee for software to organise their personal or work lives.
“And it’s something that venture capitalists can use themselves, and understand. Never underestimate the power of that.”
