From Sheet to App: How Glide’s 5-Minute Promise Drove Initial Growth
Two billion people use spreadsheets, making Excel the world’s most popular programming language by far. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Glide CEO David Siegel revealed how this insight led to a radically simple promise that launched their explosive growth: turn any spreadsheet into an app in five minutes.
The Power of Spreadsheets
“Spreadsheets are the most successful programming tool of all time,” David explains. He points to a revealing comparison: “Sometimes people who are spreadsheet enthusiasts will refer to this graph that shows the world’s most popular programming languages, like Java, C, C Plus, Python, JavaScript. And then they have Excel, and the Excel bar is like ten times taller than the most popular programming language.”
This observation shaped Glide’s initial approach: build on what people already know and use.
The Five-Minute Promise
Glide’s early messaging was remarkably straightforward. “The header of our website was build an app from a Google sheet in five minutes for free,” David recalls. “Just very clear telling people that they could start for free, that it wasn’t going to be a big investment of time, and then actually fulfilling that promise with that simple onboarding flow where they could see something quickly.”
Delivering on the Promise
The key was making the first experience seamless. “When you build a Glide app, you actually just take a spreadsheet that you already have, Glide analyzes it, and it constructs a responsive, contemporary looking, well designed app derived from that data and connected to it live. That’s one click in Glide. That’s your first click.”
This immediate transformation created an “aha” moment that drove viral adoption. Even without customization, users got immediate value: “Whenever you edit that, let’s say you connect to Google Sheet. Whenever someone edits the Google sheet, the data view in the app updates.”
From Simple Start to Complex Solutions
The beauty of this approach was that it allowed for both simple and sophisticated use cases. David describes how a basic knowledge base implementation might work: “You could share that app with a thousand people in your company. Maybe you picked a spreadsheet… you have a knowledge base in your company and it’s in a spreadsheet and you connect it to Glide and you get this live look into your knowledge base.”
From there, users could add complexity as needed: “You can add AI, you can add calculations, you can customize this interface to be interactive so that if you distribute it to 100 people in your company, you could ask them to submit feedback, to vote, to correct mistakes.”
The Results
The strategy worked. When Glide launched in February 2019, the response was “explosive,” with hundreds of daily users creating and sharing apps. Today, they’ve seen “hundreds of thousands of people… building millions of apps.”
Lessons for B2B Founders
Glide’s five-minute promise offers several key insights for founders launching complex products:
- Find the smallest possible step that delivers real value
- Build on tools and workflows people already understand
- Make the first experience instantaneous and impressive
- Allow for growth in complexity over time
- Ensure the initial promise actually delivers
The key is making something complex feel simple and accessible. As David notes about their approach: “Without even doing anything, you could share that app with a thousand people in your company.” This focus on immediate value, built on familiar foundations, created the momentum that drove Glide’s initial growth and continues to shape their success today.
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