Grist - Evolution of spreadsheets to organize your data, your way

Hello Hunters! 👋 The invention of spreadsheets has created amazing value for the world — simply by allowing people to organize data, calculate with it, and lay it out in a grid. But spreadsheets fall short in key ways that you've likely encountered. 💡 WHY WE BUILT GRIST Some years ago, I was an engineer at Google and got to work on Google Sheets. In the process, I became very handy with it, and used it to set up a workflow for a non-profit that I later started. The power and flexibility of spreadsheets made it easy. But as the project grew in the amount of data, its complexity, and number of collaborators, it started falling apart. Some tasks became too time consuming, some sheets too scary to touch, and some questions required poring through many sheets and became impractical to answer. Back then, we had to switch to a custom-built web app to replace our spreadsheets. But the spreadsheet was so close! We built Grist to be as easy to start with as a spreadsheet, but to let it grow with your needs. You can start building a spreadsheet, and end up with a proper relational database and a versatile custom application, all in one. 💐 WHAT'S SPECIAL Grist is a relational spreadsheet built on a philosophy of openness and extensibility. This makes storing data in Grist a solid and durable bet. And it allows you to do more with Grist than we could anticipate. * There is no data lock-in. You own your data, and can export it in full as a SQLite database (or Excel, or CSV), or access it via API. * Our core code is open-source. You can build and run Grist yourself, or contribute to it. Read our motivation: https://www.getgrist.com/blog/gr.... * Formulas can use familiar Excel-like functions, but are powered by Python. In fact, you are welcome to use Python freely in formulas, including the entire standard Python library. * Developers can use our API to make connections, and create custom widgets to add functionality right inside Grist. * Our roadmap is public. You can see what we are working on or planning to build: https://github.com/gristlabs/gri.... * We are active in the community for Grist creators: https://community.getgrist.com/. Please visit to ask questions or share ideas. 😺 🗂 🚀 WHO IT’S FOR From simple lists, to scientific research, to tracking of customers, inventory, or projects, most business data is a collection of records. Every use case has its special needs. Grist makes it easy to set up these records, to create relationships between them, and to see related data on the same screen. It’s developer-friendly, but most of our users are not developers at all. Don’t be intimidated! Start simple by importing some data, or exploring a ready-made example in our template library: https://docs.getgrist.com/p/temp.... 🌅 TRY GRIST TODAY Our free plan is sufficient for many purposes. Try it and see if it meets your data needs. Want to bring the power of Grist to your team? Create a Team Site and enjoy unlimited documents, workspaces, and real-time collaboration. Use the discount code "PHUNT2021" at check out for a 50% discount for your first 12 months, after a 30-day free trial. Welcome to Grist! - Dmitry Grist CEO

Just thought I’d share what I use Grist for, working at Grist and outside: - Tracking tasks for the team🚀, backlog, priorities, and who is working on what - CRM for our own customers (populated using API) - Company Cap table - Job applicants 💼, including attached resumes, and notes from each interview. - User requests that need to be shared with the dev team (via a custom integration with HelpScout) - Contractor info, including attached W-9 forms, for end-of-year 1099s. - List of company holidays 🏝, with differences for staff in other countries. - List of templates that are published, drafted, or in idea stage. - Planning and reviewing social media posts, with screenshots. - Tracking influencer and media pitches, outreach, and tasks. - Keeping track of day-by-day payroll 💸 for the non-profit New York Math Circle, along with tracking sick leave (using a modified version of our published Payroll template) - Planning a family trip with another family ✈️, keeping track of who paid for what and who is responsible for what. - Keeping track of charitable donations, including receipts (for itemizing deductions at tax time) - Planning treasure hunt clues 🕵️‍♀️ on kids’ birthdays (yes, using our published Treasure Hunt template!)

I totally agree with another comment that it is the only real competitor to Airtable that exists now. Upvoted! Love your product and would love to see how it can be also integrated into other software in the future

Congrats on the launch! We're 'launch buddies' - we just launched our service today as well :) Best of luck to you! If you'd like to check us out, we're over here - The Chatty Mammoth

Congrats! I found a lot of great use cases for Grist. I have already used it for: 1. fast data analysis by exporting data from multiple systems, super fast matching and calculations 2. helper for manually moving Prestashop to wordpress + woocommerce for some old site, it was the they faster than dealing with all the data using sheets 3. as a database for scraping some data from the sites using API, developing it right now and looks like it could be a gem for me. Scrapping some data → put it in grist to collect historical data + combined with n8n integration to collect some other external data with prebuilt integration. So it will be a marketing tool for competitors analysis and comparing it with my client's results.

?makers I love what you're building. Having worked with non-profits, I can totally relate how challenging it can be to link different sheets and bring them all under one place. Thank you also for working on different user personas and creating such useful templates to start right away. Checking out the CRM template rn 🤓

I'm running my entire online business uising Grist : Light CRM, income, expenses and margin follow up, key metrics tracking and product catalogue management. It's fast and easy. I love it.

Congrats on the launch!! Grist is amazing, I'm using it in two different companies and it's changed how we organize and manage data. The API makes it super-easy to add, remove and retrieve the data we need when we need it. It's great for connecting lead gathering for example, which we connected with Albacross.

The custom layouts and the connectors - both seem easy to use even for a i-dont-like spreadsheets hooman like me.

Congratulations on the launch @dsagal @anais_c and team! I still look back very fondly on my summer as an intern with Grist. Hope you all are doing well, and best of luck with the product rollout!