Airtable CEO Howie Liu on rebuilding agent-first

Yesterday, Airtable got acquired for $1.285B by Bending Spoons. What people don't know is that Hyperagent spun out into it's own company. Howie Liu is doubling down on Agent-first software, and helped build the MVP himself.

On this episode of Navigators, filmed just last month, we sat down to talk about how the Airtable team is rebuilding itself around agents through Hyperagent, why the product form factor has to structurally change with every leap in model capability, and the lean, agent-first companies being born out of all of it.

⁠00:00⁠ Why every model leap forces the product to change shape

⁠02:51⁠ Spinning Hyperagent out of Airtable

⁠05:56⁠ Why Hyperagent bets on horizontal, against the conventional wisdom

⁠10:45⁠ OpenClaw and the overnight-agent stories

⁠13:34⁠ Hyperagent is to OpenClaw what the Macintosh was to Linux

⁠14:57⁠ Why Howie built the Hyperagent MVP himself over the holidays

⁠18:18⁠ "Harness Squared": why the real value lives above the model

⁠28:57⁠ Hyperagent and the rise of lean, agent-first companies

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