You Can Grow and Still Lose

16 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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This content was created by Eric Siu. This content was uploaded by Eric Siu. This is a YouTube video titled "You Can Grow and Still Lose" (posted 2026-08-16) featuring a single speaker analyzing the Airtable deal and valuation dynamics. The speaker cites Jason Lemkin, reviews Airtable's ARR growth (about $156M in Dec 2021 to $480M in June 2026 — ~3.1x), contrasts prior equity value ($11.7B) with a reported $1.25B cash sale, and discusses growth rates, AI adoption, and rising market expectations for faster growth.

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There's only one lesson here. It's grow or die. And this is from Jason Lemkin. If you want one takeaway from the Airtable deal, if you look at this over here, you can see that in December 2021, they were doing about $156 million in annual recurring revenue. So ARR, right? June 2026, they're doing $480 million. So you had 3.1x ARR growth, which is pretty damn good in my opinion, on all accounts. Now their equity value in December 2021 was $11.7 billion. Now, as of August 2026, they sold for $1.25 billion in cash, but this was the The equity value. But I think this is what's interesting, guys. It's not like a, oh, they didn't embrace AI because they did. I remember for quite a while their founder was, you know, talking about AI. By all accounts, they were doing these things over here. When you're growing like a 9-figure ARR number, 20% is by all accounts pretty damn good. But he's just saying that you got to grow even faster. That's 2026 because the expectations have risen.