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In the spring of 2021, shortly after its founding in February under the iforels.com domain, IFORELS introduced a powerful open-source productivity tool to a select group of US enterprises at no cost. The product was a self-hosted alternative to Airtable — a flexible spreadsheet-and-database hybrid that had gained significant adoption in marketing, operations, and people-operations teams for its ability to manage relational data witxh spreadsheet-like ease. Rather than positioning the engagement as a standard product trial or evaluation, the company deliberately framed it as a genuine cooperation initiative. This approach proved highly effective at building trust and uncovering authentic enterprise requirements. By offering fully functional software without per-seat fees or immediate commercial pressure, IFORELS gained unprecedented access to how large organizations actually work. Enterprises shared detailed feedback on critical needs such as single sign-on (SSO) integration, comprehensive audit trails for compliance, column-level validation rules that compliance officers could readily approve, and the specific nuances of procurement workflows in risk-averse environments. Non...