ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Howie Liu co-founded Airtable in 2012, the no-code app builder used by over 80% of Fortune 100 companies. After scaling Airtable into one of the biggest software businesses on the planet, he's now building HyperAgent: a platform where anyone can deploy AI agents into their team chats, email, and calendar without writing code.
In this conversation, Howie asked me a question I couldn't answer: if you could hire as many people as you wanted for almost zero cost, what roles would you fill first? That's the question agents force you to answer in 2026.
We covered:
- The two skills that separate the people who become almost superhuman from everyone else
- How to build a virtual twin of yourself so you stop being the bottleneck in your own company
- Why builders win the next few years and what the "tinker mindset" actually means
- How to choose between Claude, ChatGPT, and HyperAgent (Howie maps the full landscape)
- A live demo of his real productivity setup, including an agent that watches X 24/7 and only pings him when something actually matters
He also walked me through a billboard campaign his agents ran end-to-end (sourcing locations, cross-referencing Google Street View, generating mockups with NanoBanana), and shared his three steps for anyone who's been reading about agents but hasn't deployed one yet.
If you've ever felt like the bottleneck in your own work, this one's for you.
Links:
Subscribe to my newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=spotify&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=HowieLiu
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/
X: https://x.com/siliconvalleymm
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko
My Companies & Products: https://partnerships.marinamogilko.co
