A new startup company co-founded by Shishir Mehrotra and Alex DeNeui are designing a next-generation spreadsheet that could very well make Excel a distant memory. Mehrotra, a former employee at Youtube, and DeNeui a former employee at Google have put their minds together to develop a document that combines a word processor and a spreadsheet, called Coda.
The goal for Coda is to have the ability to have a document that is as powerful as an app. When you open Coda, it can be seen as a blank document similar to a Google doc or a Microsoft doc. But when you start to add things, you quickly realize you can build on top of the document. For example, you can insert google maps into a Coda document and it will provide directions. The reason Coda has the ability to do this is because of its own formula language that integrates other services into its spreadsheets.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that a company has tried to reinvent a version of Microsoft. But so far, Coda has raised over $60 million from extremely notable investors, making many people think that Coda has the potential to be revolutionary.
Uber has been using Coda testing it out since the summer, having employees move some of Uber’s data slowly into Coda from Google Sheets. The main reason Coda is extremely useful for Uber, is because of the ability to link many documents together while constantly adding live data that updates automatically.
Although Coda is only available for desktops right now and has a long way to go, it is a very exciting step for businesses and people worldwide.
Newton, Casey. “Coda Is a next-Generation Spreadsheet Designed to Make Excel a Thing of the Past.” The Verge, The Verge, 19 Oct. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16497444/coda-spreadsheet-krypton-shishir-mehrotra.
Mashable. “Here’s How Bill McCoy Became a Legendary Rum Runner during the Prohibition.” Mashable, Mashable, 19 Oct. 2017, mashable.com/2017/10/19/crackle-the-real-mccoy/.
When I first started reading the article I was a bit skeptical. Why would anyone need to make a better spreadsheet to replace excel? Excel is easy to use, it comes with Microsoft’s packages, and it’s used by most companies (which makes it a standard). But as I continued reading, I became a bit less skeptical on the idea behind Coda. Having a program with all the document capabilities of Microsoft’s package programs would be extremely desirable for companies looking for cheap resources. As Manpreet Singh Dhanjal said, this would be great for financial companies to use. It would allow for great usability and versatility, maybe even becoming the standard, as Microsoft had.
The link below talks about Codas goals to have capabilities as a software used to develop more applications. This would definitely increase its marketing potential.
https://www.tillerhq.com/blog/2017/10/19/a-quick-look-at-coda-a-new-type-of-spreadsheet
This article really interests me due to the fact that I have never heard of Coda. That fact that one document can act as both a word document and a spreadsheet is awesome. Pertaining to finance companies I feel as though this is going to be awesome. Its going to help with the fact that they need multitasking. I work at best buy and many people are always saying that they need extra monitors and docking stations to help them multitask, and with a program like I feel as though it’ll make their life so much easier. I think this is an awesome program and feel as though it’ll really flourish in the future.
I have never heard of this program before coming across this blog post. This is a very interesting idea they have, to basically have a new updated version of excel that is built with newer technology for new key features. This is groundbreaking stuff and will really take away from Microsoft’s revenue. Just as google docs has taken away from Microsoft I am sure Coda will do the same thing. Being able to build apps in a spreadsheet is something never seen before (or needed really). With the new constant push for technology Coda will be a disruptive innovation for the industry and hopefully make many lives easier than they previously were.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16497444/coda-spreadsheet-krypton-shishir-mehrotra
This actually sounds so intriguing. The idea of a document that can serve as a word document and a spreadsheet is revolutionary. I know that I’ve had times where I’m bouncing between documents when doing work and it isn’t the easiest because sometimes you forget where to go next from bouncing around so much. The TechSpot article that I found shows a gif of what Coda may look like and I personally am a fan. It certainly matches that mental model of a word document with just a little bit more. That mental model aspect means that it could be easily learned how to integrate the two types of documents which can make this startup that much more successful. This is truly something that I hope to see happen because while it may be disruptive to Microsoft, it will change the way we prepare documents and papers.
Source:
https://www.techspot.com/news/71501-coda-looks-replace-google-docs-excel-all-one.html
Very interesting article and post, not knowing of Coda before and now doing some more research into it, I can definitely see this as a thing of the future as is it hits one category that all of us millennials love to claim we’re good at, multitasking. With the abilities to add multiple layers and increase depth to spreadsheets it allows companies and individuals to accomplish tasks that before would have to be on separate sheets of excel and would take much more time to collect and aggregate together. This fits right into the idea of multitasking and being able to accomplish multiple tasks at one, all under the same platform. It will be much more efficient than excel, which people will recognize and then start to use more and more as time is money in the business world.
https://www.techspot.com/news/71501-coda-looks-replace-google-docs-excel-all-one.html