Equals in 2023
Bobby Pinero | | 5 min read
What a year. We embraced AI. We reimagined BI. We waved freemium goodbye. And as the cliché goes, we're only just getting started.
Creating the spreadsheet for modern data analysis
That's our mission. It's why we get up every day excited to continue building the next-generation spreadsheet. Over the past 12 months, we've shipped hundreds of new features, improvements, and fixes. And we continue to ship fast.
However, more important than the things we built is why we built them. There are four things we've been laser-focused on across the year.
- Accelerating time to insight 🚀
Dramatically reducing the time our users spend to get meaningful insights from their live data, which they can confidently share. - Perfecting and evolving fundamentals 👌
Automating the tedious, repetitive tasks required in traditional spreadsheets today. Build a spreadsheet that's not only the most modern, but that delights. - Making reporting dead easy 📊
Every analysis can and should seamlessly become live, automatically distributed dashboards that are trusted, beautiful, and enriched with insights. - Enable greater scale and performance ⚡
Support ever-expanding data sets and make Equals faster and more performant than Excel and Sheets.
So, what did we ship? Let's dive in.
1️⃣ Accelerating time to insight
Your analysis is only as good as your data. That's why Equals connects directly to your datasources. And it's why we massively expanded the library of supported datasources.
20+ new (and improved) datasources
From Snowflake to Stripe to QuickBooks – if there's data in it, you can query it right inside your spreadsheet. All together too. That's right; no more downloading CSVs or copying and pasting queries. 😅
As we've grown the number of datasources you can connect, we also continued to iterate and improve each throughout the year. From all-new connectors for Xero and QuickBooks to easier ways to query HubSpot, we're committed to ensuring you can get the right data into Equals quickly and without fuss.
Plugn' play templates
To get you off on the right foot, we baked in a bunch of useful templates out-of-the-box, making it easy for you to:
- Track ARR , failed payments, and LTV:CAC ratio using Stripe data
- Model your cash runway
- Get a live view into deal flow and performance with HubSpot data
If you're looking for inspiration from some of the best in the business, be sure to check out the template for Figma's self-serve forecasting model, Intercom's sales efficiency model, and Pinterest's user forecast model.
2️⃣ Perfecting and evolving fundamentals
With your data in your spreadsheet now comes the tedious task of performing analysis. Just kidding. Equals excels at rote tasks, so you don't have to. 🤜 🤛
Command Bar (now with ✨ AI Assist)
Earlier this year, we released CMD K. And soon after, we introduced AI Assist making Equals the first spreadsheet with AI built-in natively. And just yesterday, two became one with the all-new Command Bar. Access any action and tap into the power of AI with a single shortcut – Command + K (Control + K on Windows). It's the fastest way to work in a spreadsheet. Here's a quick demo to prove it.
Auto-expand tables and charts
Gone are the days of manually expanding datasets and updating calculations and charts as new data comes in. Just enable Auto-expand in Equals. Job done.
Charts, pivot tables, custom number formatting, formulas, and more
Simple on the surface yet so complex under the hood. There's a lot we've come to expect from our beloved spreadsheet. So, while we've been evolving what a spreadsheet can do, we've continued to chip away at the basics you need with:
- Charts 2.0 (we even got pie 🙊)
- Pivot Tables 2.0
- Custom number formatting
- Borders
- More formulas (and counting)
3️⃣ Making reporting dead easy
When you have data, people want you to report it. And let's be honest, reporting in traditional spreadsheets and BI tools really sucks. So we built something new. Something no other tool on the market lets you do—the ability to instantly turn an analysis into a dashboard in your spreadsheet. And automatically distribute them to stakeholders via email, Slack or Slides–weekly, daily, or hourly.
We were stoked to see Dashboards take out Product Hunt's Product of the day. 🎉
4️⃣ Enabling greater scale and performance
No one likes to wait for software to perform a task. Especially when you're in the flow. That's why we're hell-bent on making Equals more performant than Sheets. And Excel. Especially when working with large data sets. Are we crazy? 😜
I could sit here and tell you that we've made query speed 3x faster, Find & Replace 10x faster, Sorting 100x faster, and SUMIFs 500x faster. And we have. But I bet you'd prefer to see Mike, a principal engineer, demo one example of how we've made Equals faster than Sheets. And almost as fast as Excel. Progress!
The path towards 1M+ rows
In February, we doubled our sheet row limit from 100K to 200K rows. We're on track to more than double that limit early in the new year. And we won't stop there.
That's all folks
We're equal parts proud and thankful for the year we've had. We continue to love what we're building. And I think that shows in what we continue to ship every week. On behalf of all us Cellmates, thank you to all our customers (today and tomorrow). We couldn't be more excited about what's to come in 2024.
🙏
Bobby
By Bobby Pinero
CEO and Co-Founder of Equals.
