Lenny's PodcastHowie Liu: How Airtable refounded its product for the AI era
Through fast and slow-thinking org splits and an IC-CEO who cut one-on-ones; Liu still ranks as the number-one inference-cost user of Airtable AI.
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Airtable’s CEO on refounding legacy products for an AI-native future
- Airtable co-founder and CEO Howie Liu explains how he is fundamentally refounding Airtable around AI, restructuring teams into “fast-thinking” and “slow-thinking” groups to ship AI features at startup speed while still investing in long-term infrastructure.
- He describes the rise of the IC-CEO: founders and leaders going back into the product weeds—prototyping, coding, and using AI tools hourly—to rediscover product–market fit in an AI-native world.
- Liu shares how product, engineering, design, and even go-to-market roles must become more full-stack and AI-literate, collapsing traditional silos and embracing rapid prototyping, experimentation, and evals (after an initial “vibes-first” phase).
- Throughout, he lays out a playbook for incumbents: reimagine your company as if starting today, aggressively use and learn from AI tools, restructure for speed, and only keep your legacy if it truly gives you an advantage in the AI era.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasRefound your company for an AI-native world, don’t just bolt AI on.
Liu argues every software company must ask: “If we were founding today with the same mission, what would we build in an AI-native way—and do our existing assets actually help?” If the honest answer is no, he suggests you should consider selling and re-starting rather than clinging to legacy.
Create distinct “fast-thinking” and “slow-thinking” orgs to balance speed and depth.
Airtable split EPD into a fast-thinking AI platform group shipping jaw-dropping capabilities weekly, and a slow-thinking group focused on deliberate, longer-horizon infrastructure like HyperDB. This lets them move at AI-native speed without sacrificing scalability and reliability.
Leaders must become IC‑CEOs: in the product, in the tools, in the code.
Liu cut recurring 1:1s, spends his time building prototypes, abusing Airtable’s own AI (he’s their highest inference-cost user), and constantly playing with external AI products. He believes CEOs who don’t use AI tools daily (ideally hourly) won’t steer their companies effectively in this era.
Collapse role silos and raise the “minimum bar” across PM, eng, and design.
In Liu’s view, every PM, engineer, and designer now needs a baseline competence in the other two disciplines: PMs as prototypers with design taste, designers who understand AI/technical constraints, and engineers who can own product and UX decisions. Similar cross-skilling should happen in marketing and sales (e.g., AEs acting as their own SEs).
Use AI continuously and playfully to discover new product form factors.
He pushes teams to cancel meetings for a day or a week just to play with AI tools, try side projects, and share results. This “play” mindset reveals new capabilities and UX patterns that can’t be learned from docs, tweets, or static decks, only by direct interaction.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesEvery software product has to be refounded because AI is such a paradigm shift.
— Howie Liu
If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission, how would you execute on that mission using a fully AI native approach? If you can't, then just find a buyer.
— Howie Liu
I’m proud to say I’m pretty sure I’m still the number one most expensive in inference-cost user of Airtable AI.
— Howie Liu
As a PM, you need to start looking more like a hybrid PM prototyper who has some good design sensibilities.
— Howie Liu
Don’t step away from the details that both you love and that made this product happen.
— Howie Liu
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