Three learnings that led to Equals 24
This week we launch Equals 24. It’s the culmination of three years of learnings and our biggest release since our initial launch. Here's how it came to be.
In most ways, Equals is exactly how we envisioned it from conception. We knew and believed there was an opportunity to build a next-generation spreadsheet connected to data and to the places where teams share their work. Yet the path to unlocking product-market fit has been full of mistakes and surprising insights.
On the eve of dropping our biggest release, a new chapter for the product, we thought it would be helpful to openly share the three biggest lessons we’ve learned and how they’ve translated into Equals 24.
1. You can build it yourself, to a certain extent
Learning SQL unlocked my career.
Around 10 years ago, I joined Intercom as their first finance hire. I am certain I would have failed in that role had I not known SQL. My time at Intercom drove much of what’s inspired Equals. In many ways, I’ve been building for myself—me, Bobby—as the target buyer.
Yet, as much as I scream from the mountain top, it’s true that the finance and business analyst who knows SQL is still a rare breed. I want finance people to learn SQL because I fundamentally believe it makes them 10 times better at their jobs. Yet, I know I’m pretty stubborn.
Building a startup is equal parts forcing your way into the world and responding to the realities of your market. In this way, I’ve had to keep somewhat of an open or beginner's mind. Perhaps one day, we’ll get more folks to learn SQL, but for now, we need to build a bridge.
Thus, the query builder was born. We first conceived it as a lightweight way for non-SQL users to access their database, and it’s worked to a degree.
But we’ve constantly gotten feedback that it wasn’t powerful enough. It could handle building simple queries, but it wasn’t good enough for most non-SQL writing workflows—e.g., dump down a table and filter it until you get what you need.
And so, one of the biggest pieces of new product in Equals 24 represents a major step forward in making the data stored in SQL databases more accessible.
The new query builder is much more powerful — it offers more filter options, is far more intuitive, and is faster. Most importantly, it allows you to pull down instant previews of your datasets and filter using familiar spreadsheet features.
It represents our first major step towards making the data you’re looking for super fast and fluid. We can’t wait for customers to try it and tell us how we can improve it.
2. Dashboards exposed us to “the company”
Putting too much weight on any feature in a product is dangerous. It’s particularly dangerous to think that any one feature is going to change the trajectory of your company.
Thinking you’re just one more feature away from mass adoption is a fallacy.
- Des Traynor, Cofounder & Chief Strategy Officer, Intercom
Yet, every once in a while, there’s something you ship that unlocks a new level of growth. That’s what happened to us with Dashboards.
From the start, we always built and shipped with the end user in mind—the analyst and their workflow. We wanted to make them more efficient at their jobs and cut the shit from their daily work. And we were successful at getting into some workflows.
Yet, it wasn’t until we moved from thinking about the individual analyst to the team that things changed for the better. For one, deals are moving through the pipeline much faster as we’ve gone from solving a problem for an individual analyst to the entire team or company. And now we’re seeing that expansion in usage and adoption adoption of Equals across our customer base.
3. Marketing a horizontal product is as hard as building one
When we first started, most of the feedback we got on the idea of Equals was that it would be impossible to build. Rebuilding a spreadsheet is a monumental effort. There’s an insanely large surface area, the bar for features and performance is high, and the number of ways in which people use spreadsheets is nearly infinite.
Building horizontal products — one that spans many different users and uses cases — is really, really difficult. Just look at how long it’s taken Airtable, Canva, and Notion to build monster businesses—10+ years each.
Yet, not many warned us about how hard it’d be to take a horizontal product to market. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Ignorance is bliss or something like that. 😅
For quite some time, we’ve marketed Equals as “The spreadsheet you’ve always wanted.” It’s catchy, and it’s clear, but it means something different to everyone.
We’ve had people come to build ARR models, sales funnels, and product analytics (our sweet spots). But we’ve also had DJs come to us looking to automate their playlist generation spreadsheet, pet resorts looking to automate their staffing workbooks, Shopify business owners looking to track orders, demand generation agencies wanting to report back to their customers, and many, many other obscure use cases. It’s been dizzying at times.
While this may sound like a good problem, it’s a real problem. With such an array of leads, it is hard to build a repeatable marketing and sales strategy. We’ve now learned that we have to verticalize our go-to-market strategy. That means we must get quite specific about the use cases we serve well, make those front and center in our marketing, and build specific sales motions to cater to each of them.
You’ve started to see that from us over the past couple of months. It started with us publishing a book, ‘The Ultimate Guide to ARR,’ and following up with a specific landing page for that use case.
Tomorrow, with Equals 24, you’ll see a new marketing site — redesigned and rearchitected — with a grown-up brand and more pointed, specific use cases.
A final word
Thank you for reading and supporting us no matter how long you’ve been following our journey. It’s been through talking with you all on a daily basis that we continually learn and evolve Equals into what it’s become.
Tomorrow marks a major milestone in our evolution as a company and product. We’d love it if you could reshare or take another look at Equals.
Watch this space. And feel free to DM me if you’d like a box. :)