Which startup was founded by Howie Liu?

Howie Liu co-founded Airtable, the cloud collaboration service that combines spreadsheet-like tables with database features.

Liu founded Airtable in 2012 with Andrew Ofstad and Emmett Nicholas. Before Airtable, he had worked at Salesforce and helped create CRM software, experience that informed the company’s attempt to make structured data easier for non-specialists to use. Airtable’s interface lets teams organize information in rows and fields while connecting records, views, forms, automations, and collaborative workflows.

The company initially operated under the name Formagrid and began attracting venture funding in 2015. Its API, embedded databases, and later extensions broadened Airtable beyond a spreadsheet substitute. Airtable is often compared with Monday.com, Asana, and Smartsheet because all support team planning, but they are not interchangeable: Airtable’s database-like structure is a defining feature. Liu is one of three co-founders, so the quiz answer is canonical even though he was not Airtable’s sole founder.