I supported two entrepreneurs with very different backgrounds: an accountant abroad who was very comfortable with technology, and a food business owner who was much less so.
What they had in common was the simplicity of the system to be built. Few tables, few fields and three interface pages. They had already done part of the work: identifying what their businesses really needed.
Remove what is not useful
It is easy to add a table, a metric or an automation. It is harder to decide you do not need one. Every addition creates something to understand, populate and maintain.
In these situations, a smaller structure made the system easier to explain. It also limited what needed to be built.
Simplicity depends on the groundwork
A small base is not necessarily a good base. It must represent the right information and support the right decisions. The number of tables is not a goal in itself.
Before adding a component, I therefore ask what action it enables, who will use it and what would be missing if we removed it.
Adapted from my LinkedIn post “System simplicity and Airtable ROI”, dated 1 July 2026.