Hi there. My name is Doug Burns, and I created AppSheet Advisor to help businesses of every size get the most out of Google AppSheet.

Here’s a little backstory…

For years, I led engineering teams at a major streaming service. Our primary responsibility was to build and maintain the core product. That meant working on things like new features, platform improvements, and the infrastructure. Basically the things that made our product work well, and that fueled customer growth. But we also supported internal teams like finance, marketing, and customer service, and they constantly needed tools to help them do their jobs better.

The problem was, our engineering time was limited. No matter how valuable these internal projects were, they always took a backseat to the core product. I hated telling teams no or making them wait months for something they needed right away. These weren’t vanity requests, they were things that could improve efficiency, reduce errors, and free up valuable time. But we simply didn’t have the time.

So they did what most teams in that situation do. They found workarounds. Spreadsheets, shared documents, long email threads and manual processes. But these were slow, inconsistent, and impossible to scale. A spreadsheet that worked for one person quickly became a nightmare when shared across teams. Data would get out of sync, onboarding new people was a mess, and every small change required time-consuming updates.

At the time, I didn’t have a great answer. But years later, after leaving that role, I came across Google AppSheet. And everything clicked.

AppSheet does something remarkable. It takes the power of spreadsheets, which businesses have relied on for decades, and extends them into fully functional apps. It solves many of the issues that make spreadsheets difficult to use for anything beyond simple lists and calculations. Unlike spreadsheets, where data is stored in flat tables, AppSheet makes it easy to link related information, like customers and their orders or projects and their tasks. It also enforces validation rules to ensure consistency, provides a real user interface instead of just a grid, connects with other systems, and works great on both mobile devices and computers.

Most importantly, it’s designed for business users. The people that best understand the problem they’re trying to solve. AppSheet empowers these “citizen developers” to create their own tools instead of waiting for IT. And that’s game-changing.

But there’s a catch.

While AppSheet is incredibly powerful, it’s not quite as straightforward as a spreadsheet, and it takes a while to completely “get it” all on your own. And beyond that, as data grows, performance can slow down. Fixing that often requires an understanding of database design and optimization, which goes beyond concepts that most non-technical users are familiar with.

For small businesses, this means spending countless hours trying to learn best practices through trial and error. That’s time that takes them away from their actual work, kind of defeating the purpose. In larger companies, IT can step in, but they may not be immediately available. Requests go into the backlog, priorities shift, and business users are left waiting or forced to work around the problem in the meantime.

That’s why I created AppSheet Advisor.

We help businesses large and small get the most out of AppSheet without bottlenecks, frustration and wasted time. We make sure citizen developers are empowered, not stuck. We free up IT and engineering teams so they can focus on their priorities. And ultimately, we help companies work smarter, reducing costs and inefficiencies so they can do more with less.

If you’re looking for a way to build better tools without breaking your team’s momentum we can help. AppSheet is a game-changer, and we’ll make sure you get the most out of it.