Air table announced today that it has acquired Adopta startup focused on helping other startups create product onboarding experiences for new users.
Earlier this year, Dopt introduced a number of features that helped users add AI-powered support tools to their respective services; that’s the main reason why Airtable is acquiring the company. The acquisition closed late last month and Dopt will be ending its service on August 15. The Dopt team will join Airtable’s AI group.
As Airtable co-founder and CEO Howie Liu told TechCrunch, this is all part of his company’s overall approach to AI. After going through a hyper-growth phase in the early days of the Covid pandemic, the company experienced a bit of a slowdown, as did most other startups (though Liu stressed that Airtable always continued to grow).
“From my perspective, it was like a real gear shift,” he told me. “Like it was a different mode. And I think it also pushed us to really focus on what the strategy is, what are the big bets we want to make.”
Liu said resource constraints create “a certain kind of creativity” and force companies to be smart about allocating the resources they have.
Like so many other startups, Airtable's current bet is on AI. Last week, it launched Airtable Co-Builderwhich allows its users to create applications simply by describing them in a Copilot-like chat interface.
“I think AI, to me, represents two things: One is that it represents a way to make it even easier for people to build software. Like the launch of Cobuilder, which was all about lowering the limit. We literally speculated about this at the time: maybe, one day, we could offer a way for people to just talk to Airtable and it would build the app for you. We’re literally already here. I don’t think I expected it to come so quickly and be so effective.”
Liu stressed that the Dopt acquisition is primarily about talent. He said he liked the team, but also noted that while Dopt only focused on onboarding, “when you do onboarding not just for your own company but for many others, you develop a really good feel for how to make experiences really intuitive.” Within Airtable, the Dopt team will be tasked with bringing additional AI capabilities to market and building the user experience around that.
The two companies did not disclose the price of the acquisition. Prior to this exit, Oakland-based Dopt raised a $5.1 million seed round in 2022, which included participation from Unusual Ventures, Designer Fund and several angel investors.
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