Identity & Overview
Rows was co-founded by **Humberto Ayres Pereira** (CEO) and **Torben Schulz** (COO) in 2016, after both spent years building spreadsheets as consultants and at a Rocket Internet food delivery startup. Pereira’s background includes consulting at McKinsey, an MBA, and startup-building, having found Excel to be an indispensable professional tool throughout. Cherry Ventures first invested at the seed round in 2016. The company originally operated under the name **dashdash** before rebranding to Rows. It is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and is registered as DashDash GmbH. The engineering team is based in Porto, Portugal. The core problem Rows addresses: business and marketing professionals frequently encounter challenges when their data is stored in the cloud — specifically around loading, analyzing, and sharing it efficiently. The solution is a cloud-native spreadsheet that supports all the functionality expected from Excel and Sheets, while offering a unique layout, an AI Analyst, and native integrations. The business model is freemium SaaS with subscription tiers for teams and enterprises. —
Market Position
Rows operates at the intersection of **AI spreadsheets**, **no-code data tools**, and **business productivity software**. The spreadsheet software category is dominated by a 40-year-old product — Excel — and together with Google Sheets, these giants are the primary competitive threat. Beyond the incumbents, Rows competes with a growing field of next-generation spreadsheet challengers. Competitors include Supermetrics, AppSheet, Caspio, Open as App, and Workato. In the AI-spreadsheet layer specifically, rivals include Quadratic (Python/SQL-native), Numerous.ai (ChatGPT plugin for Google Sheets), and Mito Labs (Python generation from spreadsheets). Airtable and Smartsheet represent the collaborative database/project management adjacent space. Rows’ differentiation rested on three pillars: it was a modern spreadsheet built for teams that needed more than Google Sheets could offer, combining native data integrations, an AI Analyst for plain-language queries, and a clean publishing experience in one tool. Its target persona was business/marketing practitioners — not data engineers. —
Traction & Scale
Over its lifetime, more than 2.2 million people used Rows to execute over 17 billion spreadsheet functions, import data from their business tools more than 8.3 billion times, and run over 800,000 AI Analyst prompts. Growth was described internally as “an overnight success, after 8 years.” The milestone of 1 million users was reached by mid-2024. Renowned companies such as AWS, Hewlett-Packard, Prisma Media, and Mercado Libre relied on Rows. Rows had approximately 67 employees as of July 2024. Geographically, the team split between Berlin (incorporated HQ) and Porto (engineering). The company’s key markets were the US, UK, and Europe. Key milestones include a public beta launch in 2021, desktop app launch in 2022, AI Analyst launch in 2023, and the Series B in May 2024. —
Financial Picture
Rows raised a total of $33.7M over 4 rounds from 12 investors. The investor roster includes Accel (lead on an early round), Cherry Ventures (seed, 2016), Lakestar, Armilar Venture Partners, and Indico Capital Partners. Accel led an $8M round that took the product from zero users. A $16M round was raised in February 2021, backed by Lakestar, Accel, and Cherry Ventures. The most recent independent round was €8M (~$8.7M) in May 2024, led by Indico Capital Partners. Dealroom pegs the enterprise valuation at approximately $80M, based on public information from May 2024. Revenue metrics were never disclosed publicly; the company never announced headline ARR figures. Scroll.media estimated the Superhuman acquisition price in the $50–70M range, though this is an editorial estimate and financial terms were officially undisclosed. —
Public Sentiment
User sentiment across review platforms is broadly positive, particularly around design and integrations. Users consistently praise the ease of use and flexibility of Rows, highlighting its ability to automate tasks and integrate with various APIs without requiring coding skills, with many appreciating how it enhances productivity for lead generation and data management. On Product Hunt, Rows is praised for its ease of use, intuitive design, and powerful integrations; users appreciate its ability to automate workflows and handle data efficiently, with AI-driven insights noted for their precision and usefulness in business decision-making. On AppSumo, one reviewer noted: “Anything that can be done in Google Sheets can be done in Rows,” with standout features being community templates and the ability to easily create custom functions. On G2, a recurring criticism emerged: Rows is “an early-stage product that is missing some formulas and functions” users are used to from Excel, though reviewers largely believed it was “a question of time.” ToolsForHumans aggregated community sentiment gives Rows a 3.8/5 score. —
Media & Press
Rows attracted notable press coverage across its lifecycle. The February 2021 Series B drew attention from Finextra, Silicon Canals, and EU-Startups. In March 2022, Rows announced desktop app beta launch and triple user growth, following a bold billboard campaign placed outside Microsoft and Google HQs. The billboard campaign was reportedly the most impactful PR moment in the company’s history, generating more than 5,000 new sign-ups, social mentions, and broad media coverage. In June 2023, Rows received coverage for launching a new AI Analyst feature, with outlets framing it as pulling ahead of Microsoft and Google. The May 2024 Series B was covered by EU-Startups, PYMNTS, and multiple startup news outlets across Portugal, Germany, and the UK. The biggest media moment came in February 2026: Superhuman announced it had agreed to acquire Rows, which had built technology connecting spreadsheets directly to business tools and bringing AI into everyday data workflows. Coverage appeared in Portugal Startup News, Tracxn, Dealroom, ContentGrip, and Scroll.media. No major controversies or scandals were identified in the company’s history. —
Current Status
Rows as a standalone product is **no longer operational**. The Rows product fully wound down on May 31, 2026, with the team moving into Superhuman’s connected AI productivity ecosystem to strengthen Coda, Superhuman’s all-in-one collaboration product. Founded by Humberto Ayres Pereira and Torben Schulz, Rows built a product connecting directly to business tools; over nine years, more than 2.2 million people used its solution, executing over 17 billion spreadsheet functions and importing data from business tools over 8.3 billion times. The acquisition allowed Superhuman to enhance its productivity offerings, specifically strengthening its Coda product by integrating Rows’ collaborative workspace and advanced data analysis capabilities. For users, all spreadsheets, data connections, scheduled automations, and published dashboards built on Rows stopped working on May 31, with no stated plan to preserve or export data automatically. —
Summary Verdict
- Rows: A well-executed niche challenger, acquired before escaping the gravitational pull of incumbents.**
- Rows spent nearly a decade building what is arguably the most thoughtfully designed next-generation spreadsheet to reach meaningful scale outside the US. It was technically credible — a real computation engine with live integrations, AI functionality, and a strong design sensibility — and it attracted real enterprise clients including AWS and HP. The founders, Pereira and Schulz, were technically and commercially sound, drawing on deep spreadsheet expertise dating to the Excel power-user days.
- However, the business never broke through to the revenue transparency that would signal category leadership. It never disclosed headline ARR metrics, and its $80M valuation at the last round reflects a company that reached respectable scale without proving a clear path to dominance against Microsoft and Google. Growth to 1 million users took eight years — respectable, but not the hockey-stick that commands an independent future.
- The acquisition by Superhuman enables integration of Rows’ technology — spreadsheets connected to business tools, embedded AI analyst — directly into the Coda collaborative workspace. For the founders and investors, the exit represents a logical outcome: a talent-and-technology acquisition by a well-resourced platform rather than a standalone IPO path.
- The deal reflects a wider shift — productivity platforms want to become operating systems for work, with email, documents, and data interacting in real time rather than existing as standalone tools.
- One-line verdict:** Rows was a technically strong, commercially disciplined challenger that built genuine traction but ultimately served as acquisition fuel for a larger platform play — a respectable outcome for European deep-tech, but not the category-defining exit its ambition initially implied.