Fieldbook
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Fieldbook, founded in 2013, was a hybrid spreadsheet-database that let anyone create a database as easily as a spreadsheet, with a REST API for access. It hit number one on Product Hunt in November 2015. After five years the team shut it down and joined Flexport in 2018.
02 / Fieldbook FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Co-founder Jason Crawford wrote that Fieldbook was the right idea at the right time but had the wrong product approach, and he dramatically underestimated the resources needed. Competing against well-funded rivals like Airtable and Notion in the low-code space, the small team could not keep pace. After five years, they shut Fieldbook down and the team was acqui-hired by Flexport.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Fieldbook was founded.
- Operations ended
Fieldbook ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Hybrid spreadsheet-database for teams
- 02
Number one on Product Hunt, Nov 2015
- 03
Wrong product approach; underestimated resources
- 04
2018: shutdown; acqui-hired by Flexport