Silicon Valley GirlAirtable CEO: This Is What the Top 1% Do With AI | Howie Liu
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
35 min read · 7,335 words- 0:00 – 0:43
Intro
- MMMarina Mogilko
I'm the bottleneck [laughs] 'cause all the content goes through me. What if I have an agent that already knows my taste and I say like, "You just let it give the feedback."
- HLHowie Liu
Absolutely. If you could hire as many people as you wanted for almost zero cost, like, what other roles would you hire people into?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Howie Liu built one of the biggest software companies on the planet. Airtable is used by more than 80% of the Fortune 100.
- HLHowie Liu
The people who are able to do that most effectively will become, like, almost superhuman, right? You're able to give good judgment and feedback to, just like a really effective CEO of humans. You could imagine building a company that you never would've dreamed of without any employees or with minimal employees. So the tinker mindset is most important, first and foremost. And I think the second is really-
- 0:43 – 3:06
The real state of AI right now
- MMMarina Mogilko
My goal is that anyone who has been consuming content about AI but was not, like, scared to try it, but thought it was too complicated-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... I want them to actually deploy a few agents-
- HLHowie Liu
Mm-hmm
- MMMarina Mogilko
... after watching this video-
- HLHowie Liu
Okay
- MMMarina Mogilko
... to realize how powerful the technology has become compared to, like, two years ago when they maybe tried one prompt in ChatGPT-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... and were like, "Ah, this is just nothing."
- HLHowie Liu
Right.
- MMMarina Mogilko
"All the hype, I don't understand it."
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
When you work with this technology correctly, it's actually really transformative.
- HLHowie Liu
Mm-hmm.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Can you talk to me about the current state of AI? So we've-
- HLHowie Liu
Sure
- MMMarina Mogilko
... we've been in an era of chatbots.
- HLHowie Liu
Mm-hmm. Right.
- MMMarina Mogilko
You had to initiate the process, correct them, and then the output, you wouldn't really trust an agent to post for you-
- HLHowie Liu
Right
- MMMarina Mogilko
... on LinkedIn. I feel like right now we're trying to close the loop with these agents.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Like, teach them our taste, teach them how we give feedback, and make them more autonomous.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Is that what you're seeing too?
- HLHowie Liu
I do think, like, there's been this, you know, kinda step function change in the experience that you can create with AI from pre-ChatGPT. But then I think we entered, like, a mature era of even AI chatbots where the models got smarter. So even thinking about, like, you know, the, the, um, year after GPT-4 came out, you know, we could actually do really interesting things with chatbots. So chatbot ma- maturation. And then I think we started to hype agents a little too early. So there was a year-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- HLHowie Liu
... like last year, people were-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Last year
- HLHowie Liu
... you know, they were saying, "This is the year of the agents." And I think that was when, uh, Salesforce, Marc Benioff went up and was talking about, like, you know, in the future every CEO is gonna have thousands of agents, like, you know, agent employees and human employees. And I think it was correct, but just early.
- 3:06 – 7:58
The evolution no one mapped
- HLHowie Liu
You know, I think, um, I think that as the models get better and better, we do need to rethink the entire paradigm and, like, the, the product form factor to reflect it. So I'll use a parallel here, which is in the development agents world, you know, you had Copilot, GitHub Copilot, that was kind of the first, you know, kind of chatbot for developers, right? And it really was that. Like, you couldn't have it go and develop, like, really complex programs. It was more like you could auto-complete a few lines of code at a time, and so it was a convenience. Then you had Cursor, which introduced its own AI agent called Composer, uh, which is different from, like, the, the... now what they're using that name for is the, the model they've, uh, fine-tuned. But at the time, it was a much more autonomous agent. You could tell it, "Go and, like, build me this file, write me this, this simple, like, you know, kinda script or, or, uh, or function," and it would do something a lot more autonomously than, you know, the original Copilot experience. I think now, yet, we've entered into a new era where the agents do enable, you know, kind of you to go and execute on parallel, in parallel with multiple agents. And so in the development world, the best developers are already... You know, they're not using necessarily Cursor. They're actually now using many different agents, maybe it's Claude Code, for instance, running in parallel, and it almost does feel like they have their own company or team running, including overnight, right? I actually, when I'm developing, I use agents that... You know, I try to have them do something substantial before I go to sleep so that-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- HLHowie Liu
... you know, for hours at least, like, I'm not wasting bandwidth cycles, um, and they're, they're doing something useful. And so when I wake up, they've already completed, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
So I, you know, I think we are moving to a world where the form factor will start to look more like managing a fleet of agents or almost managing, like, you know, people. Um, you know, like everybody when they transition from being an individual contributor to becoming a team manager, it's kind of a different role, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
You still need some of the same techniques, but also it's quite different. So I think we are moving in that direction. But to your point, I think it's, it's also not yet a, you know, at a point where you literally just have the agents do everything, right? Like, I don't think agents can effectively run an entire company or any substantial company autonomously.
- MMMarina Mogilko
When do you think this flip is gonna happen? Do you think by the end of this year we're gonna see more output-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... that's actually deployed right away by agents? Picture this. You have something clear in your head, how a banner, a logo, a thumbnail should look, and you're building a personal brand, and you need fast execution. Design.com is a perfect tool for that. You describe what you want, the AI builds it. You refine in chat, it adjusts on the spot. Logo, website, banners, social graphics, business cards, presentations, you can use the same tool for all of this. Say if you're growing on LinkedIn, and a lot of people, uh, say that video banners actually work best right now. Design.com can help you with that. I'm seeing more and more people who post graphics, and it's kinda hard to stay consistent if you have to redesign everything from scratch every time. Or maybe you need a logo for your personal brand. Design.com is a perfect tool for all of that. You describe what you want, you get something usable in a couple of minutes. If you want to change the layout, swap a color, try a different font, you just ask in chat, it updates. No revision cycles, no delay. Same flow for Instagram posts, stories, YouTube thumbnails, anything you're posting that week. Set your brand once, the platform carries it across every new asset. Over 400,000 logos built so far, a million designs total, and what you make is yours to use commercially. If design has been the thing you've always wanted to work on but just couldn't, try Design.com yourself. Link is in the description. It's free to start.
- HLHowie Liu
I think that to your point, like, on analytics, you know, the, the fact that agents can help close the loop with, you know, maybe drafting some content, there's still a human review step, you're posting it, and then maybe the agents are helping to analyze what's working, what's not working, and seeing what's, you know, kind of, um, catching fire out there from other people on, uh, in the content world, you know, I think it does create this, like, really high leverage, uh, circuit for people who know how to effectively deploy agents. So even if humans are still in the loop at points, I think that the amount of the loop or the, the, uh, percentage of the loop that is more agent-driven is going to increase and increase and increase until at some point it's almost like, yeah, there's a human, but, like, that human is extremely leveraged.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
And you could imagine building a company that you never would've dreamed of without any employees or with minimal employees, now you can do that with agents.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Absolutely, and I see it with my content. W- we haven't really expanded the team.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
We're still hiring, butWe are producing, I think, three times more content-
- HLHowie Liu
Wow
- MMMarina Mogilko
... just because it's so much easier to generate-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... that content. Of course, we have to check and everything.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
But one person can now handle, like, GEO-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... and newsletter-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... and also Threads. [laughs]
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
And another person can do three other outlets.
- HLHowie Liu
And maybe even, like, researching ideas, so, like, you know, all the substantive work that goes into, like, going deep on a topic-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- 7:58 – 12:12
Claude vs. ChatGPT vs. HyperAgent — how to actually choose
- MMMarina Mogilko
So for someone who's excited about all of this, but also they don't know... Like, I am also confused. Every week-
- HLHowie Liu
Hm
- MMMarina Mogilko
... there's something new.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah. [laughs]
- MMMarina Mogilko
There's Claude with Cowork, Codex.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh my God, Perplexity Computer.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Amazing. HyperAgent.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
How do you choose? And I saw you use Claude as well.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
It's not like you're just choosing one tool. What's the best setup?
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, so I think maybe going back to our generational metaphor, you know, there was, like, the chatbot era, and there were a lot of products that were built as chatbots. And, you know, now we have agents that are much more fully autonomous. So I first, you know, would separate products that kind of fall into the chatbot era w- from the agent era. Um, even within the same company, like Anthropic, they have Claude, like the vanilla version, which is much more close to a chatbot. I mean, it is actually a weekly agentic, uh, product, so it can do a few turns at once. But you're not using Claude to go and, you know, work on something for five hours without human intervention, right? And this is Claude, like the end user product.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
Confusingly, they also use that name for their models and as a prefix to their other products like Claude Code and Claude Cowork.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
But the plain, kind of end user Claude experience, I think of as more of a chatbot. Um, likewise with ChatGPT, and that can still be very valuable. But, you know, when you think about, like, frontier agents that are actually able to perform, you know, maybe hours of human equivalent work autonomously, you know, you put into that category OpenClaude. You know, everybody kind of got excited about OpenClaude on Twitter because of what it could do. Um, I would put into that category Claude Cowork. Um, and then, you know, products like Perplexity Computer and of course HyperAgent. And then within that bucket there's kind of, um, there's, you know, I think different, uh, options for, you know, depending on what you want. So what HyperAgent gives you, and what we've focused on, is both the fact that you can do this in a much more team-enabled setting as you-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- HLHowie Liu
... kind of refine their skills and memory. So we put a lot of emphasis into this, like, closing of the loop for self-improvement-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... which I think is key because even though agents are out of the box very smart, and they're only getting smarter as the models underneath them get better and better-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Most people use Claude like a search engine. They type in a question, they get an answer. Most times they're not really satisfied with it, and they close the tab. I did the same thing for months, and I was looking at people who were saying AI is changing their life, and I'm like, "Mm?" Then I spent one afternoon setting it up properly, uploaded a few files about how I think and how I work, and it completely changed. I wrote the whole process up step by step. You get it when you subscribe to my newsletter, Future Proof. It's free. The link is in the description. This is what I'm very excited to try when you mentioned the team collaboration.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
We don't use Slack, we use Telegram.
- HLHowie Liu
Okay. Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
But I saw you have this Telegram integration.
- HLHowie Liu
Yes.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And the thing is, and it's so funny, like, I feel like the industry is moving at the same pace-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- 12:12 – 15:39
Building a virtual twin of yourself with AI
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, I think that is one of the interesting emergent phenomena here, which is, you know, as people have gotten really into their agent building, like OpenClaude, uh, you know, you see all these OpenClaude fans who have created like a virtual twin of themselves in their OpenClaude instance, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm.
- HLHowie Liu
This is my, like, virtual Howie agent-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... that has really learned so much about me and actually does have real time access to the same context that I do, so it knows what my schedule is.
- MMMarina Mogilko
This is crazy.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
This is... It's crazy, right?
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah. It's like we-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... you know, they talked about the singularity and, like, how we're gonna put ourselves into like a, a computer and, like, I mean, it's kind of actually happening-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... with agents.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah. W- what's the most unique use case with HyperAgent that you've experienced?
- HLHowie Liu
Mm. I personally like, um, you know, kind of these multimedia related use cases. So what I mean by that is, you know, sometimes for fun and sometimes for like actual kind of, you know, functional marketing purposes, I like to have a HyperAgent go and create, like, marketing ideas. So, uh, at one point, uh, we actually did do a billboard, a small billboard campaign for HyperAgent announcing the launch of it, and I had it go end-to-end sourcing the actual billboard location. So we worked with a, um, a vendor that had like a basically a list of all the billboards that were available. Um-
- MMMarina Mogilko
One of one or are, are you doing it here?
- HLHowie Liu
What's that?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Are you doing it on one-on-one?
- HLHowie Liu
Uh, it was in New York-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Oh, here
- HLHowie Liu
... LA, and SF.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
And, uh, and so we grabbed all the inventory, and then it had all the specific locations, like what street it was on. And then HyperAgent was able to process all of those locations, cross-reference them with Google Street View and Google Maps-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm
- HLHowie Liu
... so it can literally put them on a map and then even show like the Street View point of view of like here's what-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Nice
- HLHowie Liu
... that billboard looks like, um, on the street. And then best yet, because it c- it, it's very versatile in terms of being able to chain together different tools, um, it was able to take those Street View images and then pass that in to leading image models like NanoBanana, and then use that to generate a really high fidelity mock-up of what our billboards would actually look like. Um, you know, so it took real world location shots, mashed that up with, like, our actual kind of campaign, uh, imagery, which it created based on the concept-And then could help us visualize, like here's literally what that, um, that billboard on Sunset will look like.
- MMMarina Mogilko
That's amazing.
- HLHowie Liu
Um, I thought that was very cool. And then, you know, I think like, um, we ended up not, you know... Like we weren't around, uh, long enough to do a Super Bowl ad. We just started HyperAgent basically around the, uh, the holidays. But, you know, had we done a Super Bowl ad, or maybe for next year, you know, I, uh, use HyperAgent, uh, to, to go and generate some like actual video concepts, right? So again, it's able to like come up with concepts combining, you know, real product marketing, understanding of like, "What does this product do?" We fed it or gave it access to our documentation for HyperAgent, so very, um, meta, but like HyperAgent was then able to learn about all of the capabilities and differentiation-
- 15:39 – 20:22
Live demo: Howie's real productivity setup
- HLHowie Liu
reply."
- MMMarina Mogilko
Can you show me, uh, some of your productivity-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, yeah. Sure
- MMMarina Mogilko
... use cases? 'Cause this is where I see a lot of my time being saved-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... when, uh, I optimize stuff with, uh-
- HLHowie Liu
Absolutely
- MMMarina Mogilko
... with agents.
- HLHowie Liu
Okay. So this is a, uh, this is actually a demo account of mine that's realistically recreated-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- HLHowie Liu
... uh, based on my actual usage. Uh, my actual usage has everything of mine, like all of my, uh, uh, you know, like calendar, my emails, everything, so it's a little sensitive. Either you can have it go on a recurring schedule or like similar to OpenClock and have a heartbeat mode where it's always, you know, waking up and-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- HLHowie Liu
... checking new stuff, and then pushing you messages either via Telegram, it could be via Slack, it could be via email.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
But you can kind of set it up how you want. Um, I like Telegram because then it just feels like, it's almost like a personal assistant like messaging you all the time.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Exactly.
- HLHowie Liu
You can respond to it. And especially Telegram, if you have the bot living in your group channels already with your team-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... then you can just @mention the bot and say, "Hey, you know, go research this thing-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... on behalf of the team."
- MMMarina Mogilko
Go create caption for this post. Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Exactly. Okay. So here's one that, uh, is one of my personal favorites. So obviously you have to be on top of Twitter or X like 24/7 now to like keep up with all the latest news. It's all happening so fast.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Crazy. Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
It's kind of overwhelming, and sometimes I feel like I just like, I forget to check X, and I miss some really important stuff. So I have one agent whose entire job is just to constantly watch X.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
And literally it's like doing this like all the time, 24/7, and then it's making a judgment call. It knows enough about me and what I care about, and Airtable and HyperAgent, that it can push to me messages alerting me, you know, when there's something interesting, only when it's actually relevant to me, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
And it can even like frame this around, like, "Why is this relevant to you, to Howie?" Um, but I-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Interesting how-
- 20:22 – 24:58
How to develop the builder mindset
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah. I just saw you speak-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... on stage.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And you said builders-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... are gonna win-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... in the next-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... few years. How do you adopt the builder mindset?
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, I mean, I think what really being a builder comes down to is, one, like having the appetite to tinker. Like, that's the most important thing, right? Because I think it's a humility to say, like, nobody knows all the answers. Like, if somebody tells you, like, "Here's exactly how to build the perfect agent for every single use case and every single company out there," like, they're full of it because there's no way to prescribe that so perfectly. Like, it's constantly changing, and what's really cool about the builder community out there already, uh, on X for instance, or like on Reddit, et cetera, is you're finding that people are, like, almost accidentally discovering the best ways to use agents, right? Like, you know, they're learning, hey, you know, it turns out, like, one way to make the agents very, very good at content production is to give it this kind of a skill with this kind of guidance, right? Or maybe create a skill from, you know, the MrBeast, uh, leaked handbook-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- HLHowie Liu
... on, like, how to create content. Like, you know, it turns out when you feed that into the agent and have it develop its own skill informed by that, it does really well, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Um, and so, you know, there's all of these emergent practices that actually make these agents work better and better, and the only way to go and kind of like really, you know, get good at it is to try it out, right? And the great thing is, like, you know, there's no, you know, kinda master class. There's no PhD that you need for it. I mean, I'm sure you could take some great classes out there, but you don't really have to, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
And like, you know, if you have nights and weekend time even to go and just play around with the agents and it's quite fun to use, I think that's the best way to actually get into it. So the tinker mindset is most important first and foremost, and I think the second is really just a willingness to really distill down, like, what is the work in order to generate the output you want, right? I think some people, um, you know, have an easier time imagining, you know, what is the ultimate purpose of, let's say, software engineering or sales or marketing or, you know, content creation. And if you are stuck in, in, in terms of thinking about it as, like, the activities that you currently do, so software engineering, the activity of writing code by hand line by line is now gonna be obsolete, right? So-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Same with script writing.
- HLHowie Liu
Exactly.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, but if you can rethink the, the work as being how do I generate great software, how do I output great code and great applications and get to go up in the abstraction to, like, have a team of agents that actually do that work for me or th- you know, the same for script writing or content, like, I think then you're able to really effectively leverage agents because you're thinking about the outcome first-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... and then how do you use these awesome, you know, capabilities to generate the output versus being stuck in the activities of before. You know, I think, like, a lot of it is just, like, getting that starting point, right? Like, you know, it feels sometimes very daunting to get started. Like, I personally every time I try a new generation of AI or products, you know, it, it always feels like it, you know, a little intimidating.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Like, how do I get started? Like, you know, over the holidays, I personally got back into, uh, software development i- in a really big way. Like, I had done some tinkering before, but, um, with the latest family of models, like, I actually started building, like, with code again, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
And using development agents. And at first it was like, you know, like I just picked some low stakes projects to, to do, like, for fun and got so immersed into it that by the time I personally started working on HyperAgent in code, like, you know, it was already very, like, exciting and, you know, I had built up some confidence around, like, what I could do with the agent. So-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... I think, you know, the, the, um, the really empowering thing is, like, you can start with anything, like low stakes personal use cases, but that helps you develop the confidence and the fluency to then go and bite off something even bigger.
- 24:58 – 29:05
Fun agent use cases
- HLHowie Liu
I wanted to do.
- MMMarina Mogilko
I should, I should set up an agent for kids' school emails.
- HLHowie Liu
Yes. Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Now that I'm thinking about this.
- HLHowie Liu
Well, I mean, now that we're talking about personal use cases-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... like, I have some fun ones which are, um, you know, I'm in the market for a used car right now, and so it actually, uh... I have an agent that's monitoring all of the used car listing sites and then finding cars of my spec. I want a convertible. Uh, here, you know, we're here in LA.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
It's a good place to have a convertible. And it will go and do extensive research on the price point I want and, like, do the cars have the specs that I want and even, like, you know, what, um, what are the, uh, you know, locations. Like, let me click through and, like, see where it is and more details. Um, but-You know, just like fun personal use cases-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... that I wouldn't have otherwise hired like a person to go and monitor.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Now I'm thinking I need to book my flights to Cannes. I could-
- HLHowie Liu
Yes, yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... basically build an agent that goes to all my points that I have-
- HLHowie Liu
Yes
- MMMarina Mogilko
... on different credit cards-
- HLHowie Liu
Yes, yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... and find the right-
- HLHowie Liu
Oh, yeah, yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... the right flight comes up.
- HLHowie Liu
For a points optimizer.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Like use the points effectively. Even help you like plan out like with a map like all the different places you wanna go. So yeah-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Fascinating
- HLHowie Liu
... it's a very fun time.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
One, you know, I, I saw this, uh, term referenced in a, um, like one of the AI forums I'm in, but you know, one way to think about agents is like, I mean, obviously you can use it in your core job, but it also enables you to go and make all these luxury hires that you otherwise wouldn't go. Like, maybe you wouldn't hire a full-time travel concierge-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Right, yeah
- HLHowie Liu
... for your team, right? Like, it just, that would be like too, uh, it wouldn't be worth like a full-time hire. But now with an agent, you can literally have an agent whose full-time job even running 24/7 is to find ways to optimize your points, find like new, um, you know, itineraries that are surfacing-
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm
- 29:05 – 31:15
First 3 steps to start with agents today
- MMMarina Mogilko
steps.
- HLHowie Liu
Um, one is obviously sign up for HyperAgent and, um, you know, we, uh, you know, we try to make HyperAgent really, really in- non-intimidating, right? So it's got a very great gooey experience. You don't have to go in and like do technical setup. It's kind of like using the Mac, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
As opposed to like setting up Linux. And the second is like just come up with like a few personal use cases or low stakes work use cases. I think, um, problem hunting, like figuring out like what are the problems you wanna solve is like 80% of the battle, right? Because it turns out the actual building of the solution is no longer so hard. Like compare this to the prior era where like, let's say you wanted to build custom software even before no code, and you wanted to solve a problem with like a custom app. Okay, well you could pick the right problem. You need to track, let's say, all your brand deals, but then actually writing the code to build the app is like all of the effort.
- MMMarina Mogilko
It's not worth it.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, it's not worth it.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Easier to hire someone, yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
And so now I think really it's kind of inverted where the, the most interesting part, and actually the part that you should spend the most time on upfront, is just coming up with a list of like what are all the problems that I wanna solve? And then third is like have fun with it. I think that's the most important part too, a- or that's a really important part too, is, you know, this has to become like a passion. I think like the best agent users and builders I see really kind of enjoy it, right? Just like, you know, if you were an early internet user, you had to kind of enjoy it, right? Like there's a functional purpose to it, but also like, you know, it's just fun to go online and like, you know, see what else was out there, shopping sites and like news sites and games and, and so on. And so there is this like interactive and like just kind of very dynamic nature to agents that I think to become truly fluent you have to have passion, you know, technology fit, right? So like try to enjoy it, and that's why I think like also picking the lower stakes, you know, kind of fun use cases where you get to really experiment rather than putting all this pressure on yourself up- upfront to like deliver some kind of ROI.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Mm-hmm.
- HLHowie Liu
Like it's just like any other new and disruptive tech, computers, the internet, the iPhone. Like to really understand how to apply it in a very efficient and effective business way, you have to first really kind of I think immerse as a consumer
- 31:15 – 32:32
The two skills that will make you superhuman
- HLHowie Liu
of it.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah. And two skills everyone should be working on-
- HLHowie Liu
Mm
- MMMarina Mogilko
... from what you're saying, uh, the skill to figure out the problem to solve-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... and the skill to make the right call-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... or judgment.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, absolutely.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Love it.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, I think those will be the two most important things, and effectively mastering them I think makes you into superhuman in this era.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Exactly.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Exactly, and the- we're living in an age where everyone has a potential to become a superhuman-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah
- MMMarina Mogilko
... in less than I think couple weeks. [laughs]
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, yeah. I mean, seriously.
- MMMarina Mogilko
It's a, it's a very, very speedy process.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah. I think we'll, we'll see a lot more entrepreneurship too. I think like, you know, the, the era of like one person building a great company, you know, whether it's like the literal billion-dollar revenue company that was forecasted, uh, with, with AI or, you know, it could just be, doesn't have to be a billion in revenue to still be successful. But I think a lot more people are gonna be able to get off the ground with their own ideas and build a business, whether it's an online retail business that, you know, before they couldn't have afforded to hire the team to market it, to source the inventory, to build a site. Now you can do that all with agents, right?
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah.
- HLHowie Liu
Or it could be a content, you know, kind of business or it could be like a software business. Like all of these businesses I think are now much more possible for anyone out there who just has the idea and sees an opportunity.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Yeah, it's amazing time to be alive.
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Thank you so much, Howie.
- HLHowie Liu
Absolutely.
- MMMarina Mogilko
And thank you so much-
- HLHowie Liu
Yeah, this was so much fun
- MMMarina Mogilko
... for the product.
- HLHowie Liu
Of course, yeah.
- MMMarina Mogilko
Thank you.
Episode duration: 32:32
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