[HN Gopher] Show HN: Sourcetable - AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform
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Show HN: Sourcetable - AI Spreadsheet and Data Platform
Hi HN! I'm Eoin, founder of Sourcetable (https://sourcetable.com).
Sourcetable is an AI-native spreadsheet that syncs with all your
data. Users pair with an AI copilot that helps them do their
spreadsheet work, as well as more database-centric analysis and
SQL. Soucetable syncs with databases including Postgres, MySQL,
and MongoDB, and over 100+ business applications including Stripe,
Zendesk, Hubspot, Quickbooks and Google Analytics. That data is
available in a spreadsheet, and any models you build automatically
update in near-real-time as new data flows in. The core primitives
are AI + spreadsheet + data sync + storage + compute. If you want
to play with Sourcetable today, the easiest way is to upload a CSV
and start asking questions. Who is it for? Sourcetable is for
analysts, operators and finance folk doing data-centric work in a
spreadsheet. Sourcetable's spreadsheet-based AI assistant
understands workbook range selection and can adjust scope context
to the datasets you are working with. You can talk directly to your
database and SaaS integrations, which is great for analysis, data
search and retrieval, SQL writing & editing (including writing
joins across different datasets), and automatic chart creation.
Niching down, if you work in operations at a <50 person startup or
SMB and your company relies on a Postgres or MySQL database,
Sourcetable is an affordable reporting tool with turnkey data
infrastructure that doesn't require code or engineers to set up.
Spreadsheets are the most used analytical tool on the planet. AI is
a platform shift with broad applications. We are staying open-
minded about users and use cases since everything is so new.
Backstory: I spent ten years working in de-facto operations and
technical roles at startups. Sourcetable draws from that experience
of needing better data tooling inside spreadsheets, and constantly
hacking ad hoc solutions to fill the gap. Andrew (CTO / co-founder)
previously had a deep learning company and was initially drawn to
the idea that Sourcetable could be an operating system for the web.
We're both Aussie expats in the Bay Area, which is how we met.
Internally, we think of Sourcetable as an application platform,
with AI applications being a useful and interesting place to focus.
Features & Use Cases: Talk to your CSV files, spreadsheets,
integrations, and datasets using LLMs. AI + data work: Text-to-SQL,
search and retrieval from databases, LLM-based data analysis. (This
is an entirely different experience to what Copilot/Gemini &
Excel/Sheets provide, since they are thin workbooks and not data
platforms.) AI + spreadsheet work: formula assist, workbook
analysis, data cleaning, chart creation, error handling,
summarization, chat, etc. Automated reporting: data is synced,
reports you build stay up to date. No-code data access: give the
business team safe database access so they will leave you alone!
Centralizing data for cross-channel reporting. (e.g. Postgres +
Stripe + Mailchimp) Analyzing large CSV files: Sourcetable can
handle multi-gigabit files. (Google Sheets can't handle large data
and the experience in Excel is rather cumbersome.) Technical
Details: Sourcetable was built to be fast. It was also built to
scale. AI: LLama 3 (via Groq), Claude, GPT-4o, LiteLLM, custom
LLMs Frontend: DuckDB, React, ShadCN, AntV / Bizcharts, Plotly,
CodeMirror, Hookstate Backend: DuckDB, Python, Cassandra, Redis,
NGINX, Cloudflare Data Eng & Transformations: Fivetran, DBT,
Apache Arrow, SQLglot Distributed Computing & Scaling: Daft, Ray,
Cloud Formation Other: Linux Namespaces, Dill (U.Queensland) A
huge thank you to the open source community, and a special shout-
out to DuckDB for being so damn fast. Thank you also to Groq &
Anthropic for the rate limit increases in time for this ShowHN
post! - Feedback: Product feedback is welcome!
eoin@sourcetable.com
Author : mceoin
Score : 47 points
Date : 2024-09-19 11:28 UTC (11 hours ago)
| yawnxyz wrote:
| > Niching down, if you work in operations at a <50 person startup
| or SMB and your company relies on a Postgres or MySQL database,
| Sourcetable is an affordable reporting tool with turnkey data
| infrastructure that doesn't require code or engineers to set up.
|
| I'm already using Retool for these kinds of tasks- what does
| sourcetable do that I can't already do with Retool?
|
| edit: also, did you build your own spreadsheet engine, or use an
| off-the-shelf one? (also will it be open source ;P)
| mceoin wrote:
| Category Comparison (table-based solutions): "How are you
| different than Retool/Airtable/Coda/Notion/Zapier Tables, etc."
|
| The primary difference vs table-based solutions is that
| Sourcetable is a spreadsheet in the common sense of the word,
| similar to Excel and Sheets. We have A1 notation and cell-based
| referencing. This is what most users expect, and this
| flexibility/familiarity has a big impact on the breadth of
| users and use cases within a team.
|
| The formula referencing system of these table-based solutions
| is usually very limited both to columns/rows (not cells), and
| is a set of SQL-based queries which are much more limited than
| that 500+ formulas and functions spreadsheet users commonly
| expect.
|
| Retool specifically: I tend to think of Retool as a lightweight
| custom-ERP software system, whereas Sourcetable more like Excel
| + PowerBI + Data Warehouse, so we will generally be much
| stronger for reporting and analysis. We definitely have some
| overlap in potential users since technical operators should
| like us both. FWIW - Retool is an excellent product.
| dioptre wrote:
| Hi I'm Andy, Cofounder & CTO @ Sourcetable.
|
| We use a heavily modified licensed engine that prevents us from
| open sourcing everything (for now). We have plans to open
| source our agentic/plugin framework, and other parts of the
| system. We also have a strong ethos of contributing back to
| open source where we can (contributed back to Arrow, DuckDB
| etc.).
|
| I'd also add that while everyone knows how to use and work with
| spreadsheets, we also provide a SQL layer on top that you can
| use to query data sources as an advanced user (we developed a
| nomenclature to work within sheets/across sheets/files/our
| data-warehouse). This allows more technical users to work side-
| by-side in the same environment as non-technical users without
| crossing pythonic or reporting boundaries.
|
| On top of this, the AI assistant can answer most of the
| questions you might have of all this data.
|
| I think as ML gets more sophisticated, we will in general need
| to be less technical. The "tooling" might even disappear, but
| we will still need something to communicate important data
| centric decisions. Whether you like it or not spreadsheets are
| the foundation of human research and operations and have been
| for thousands of years, and I feel humanity will need less
| complicated "tools" and we will keep to our roots.
| escot wrote:
| Very cool. It would be great to have auto complete across cells.
| mceoin wrote:
| Yes we don't yet have the full auto-suggest magic that Sheets
| offers, but you can click-drag for auto-complete the same way
| Excel offers.
|
| We released Sourcetable today with the AI chatbot & AI data
| analysis features, but a very limited cell-based AI (only
| "summarize" and "fix formula"). We'll be releasing a big AI-
| based magic-autofill solution in the coming weeks.
| sim_123 wrote:
| This is amazing. I've been scouting for such a solution as we've
| outgrown excel. Giving it a spin
| mceoin wrote:
| A very common use case we see is SMBs having outgrown their
| spreadsheet but not wanting to move to a full-blown BI tool.
| They want the power, but not the change in interface/medium.
|
| I didn't go into details above but a nice thing is that we
| leverage cloud compute and storage, so you can query billion-
| row data in sub-second time. (Courtesy of Duck!)
| _hfqa wrote:
| Congrats on the launch! It's wild to see AI stepping into
| spreadsheets like this. Pretty soon there won't be a part of our
| workflow AI hasn't touched.
| mceoin wrote:
| Thanks _hfqa! We think there's massive potential here. It's a
| big platform shift, and spreadsheets weren't really impacted by
| the mobile or cloud compute waves, so it's a space long-overdue
| for disruption. (The last shift was back when Google Sheets
| took spreadsheets to the browser 17 years ago!!)
| alooPotato wrote:
| Cool.
|
| How did you build so many integrations so fast?
|
| Selfishly, would love to see Streak (CRM) integration as well.
| mceoin wrote:
| Mostly Fivetran, a little Airbyte, and a few custom
| integrations. Would love to add Streak (can you get it into
| Fivetran? We can usually crank those integrations out within an
| hour.)
| mceoin wrote:
| p.s. I was a massive Streak user at a previous (sales-driven)
| startup. Big fan!
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