Airtable CEO Howie Liu on 13 years of building, $11B valuation, and the agentic future of databases

Speaker 1: bring in Howie Luthers to table. Howie, how are you doing? Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming on down to the TBPN UltraDome. For those who might be living under a supercomputer, not a data center, introduce yourself. Tell us who you are.

Speaker 8: Alright. Howie Liu, co founder and CEO of Airtable. Yeah. Now also maker of HyperAgent, part of Airtable. Cool. I've been doing this for twelve, thirteen years now.

Speaker 1: Thirteen years. Overnight success. Give us the backstory. Take us from college Yeah. Through early career to the first the founding moment. Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. So in high school, kinda got into programming. Like, my dad had this c plus plus book. Mhmm. Left it in this, you know, corner of the house one summer and

Speaker 1: I was

Speaker 9: super bored.

Speaker 1: C plus plus. Learned it. I mean,

Speaker 8: this is, like, 2003 Okay.

Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Was a pre Python for the

Speaker 8: mean, Python was was around, but really use it.

Speaker 1: That wasn't the jumping off point.

Speaker 8: Java and stuff. Early days for even, like, web apps.

Speaker 1: Right?

Speaker 8: Like, Rails didn't exist, like, that stuff. So learned c plus plus. Sure. Thought it was kinda cool. Yeah. And then started thinking about, like, how do I turn this into, like, a real career? Because it it was a lot more fun than like classes and like I went to Duke, took some like mechanical engineering classes. But on the side, basically learned how to do web app programming like first with PHP, then like Rails and stuff. And I stumbled on Y Combinator actually like pretty early on. It was like maybe o six. That's like the first class. Literally the first class. Like, guess o five. No. Because I I remember like I saw Hooped Yeah. Someone's first company and I was doing research like I wanted to do a similar type of company Yeah. Or product and I was like nope, you know, I was a nobody. College, didn't know anything. And through that, like found out about Luke and I was like, damn it. Somebody's already got this this this idea and then learned about YC and like Sequoia. And so that kind of became my first inroad into like just learning about that whole world of like startups and tech. Eventually, after college, applied to YC with my first company, which was basically, it was called eTacz, like contacts with an e. Okay. It was like a personal CRM product. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: They were like, oh,

Speaker 8: this is a big problem. Everybody has problem. Yeah. I'll fund it right away. Am

Speaker 1: I correct in in my my take has always been Yeah. The people that clamor for a personal CRM really just don't realize that their friends are people that they do business with. They should either just use a real CRM

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Or just don't and just be friends.

Speaker 8: I mean, it's yeah. I think I think it's like a very unique target audience for whom it's a very high pinpoint. So Sure. Think there's, a market there, but, like, it's a very, like, power user, prosumer audience. And the punchline of it, though, was that, like, after a year of work, we, worked on this thing, raised some money, you know, hired, a couple people.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. And then we kind of realized, like, I sort sort of realized, like, I think it's a more niche market than we set out to to go after. Mhmm. And we had some, like, different acquirers come knocking, like Salesforce was one of them, like, also big, like, consumer Internet companies who wanted to just buy us for talent. Sure. And, you know, to me, it was like

Speaker 2: And what this is 2,000

Speaker 8: We and were winner 2010, that batch. Oh. And then the acquisition talks were like 2011, basically. Okay. Late late twenty eleven. And, you know, we kinda got to this point where I realized like, I wanna work on a really big problem, like a meta problem. Not like, here's one small niche for, like, some people.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: But instead, like, what's, like, the underlying problem, which is, you know, you could actually build this whole CRM

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: With, an app platform. Right? Sure. Like, you really want something that's a lot more just configurable and customizable. And so we took an acquisition by Salesforce Okay. Worked there. And like for me, the big light bulb moment was, you know, Salesforce is one big data

Speaker 2: What's Benioff like on all hands?

Speaker 8: I mean because he's

Speaker 1: he's he's like he's

Speaker 2: an electric on this many

Speaker 8: all like, all hands were quite infrequent at Salesforce at the time. But like, went to like their their big sales kick off that year. Yeah. I mean, Mark is like a very smart guy Yeah. And also a very like commanding presence. Like he's a physically like you would if you met him like on the street and didn't didn't know who he was, like you'd probably think he was like a line backer in the Like he's massive. Yeah. He just like he exudes charisma. Like Yeah. Even in like a quiet small room like he'd take meetings in his house. Like I'd go over with like you know some of the other like He's

Speaker 1: the sales guy's final boss.

Speaker 8: I mean, but like, not like,

Speaker 2: he's like, going he's head to head with him.

Speaker 8: It's over. I get it. Forfeit. Best salesman ever. But he's like, he's just got such a presence even when he's not like like booming, you know, out loud like on a stage

Speaker 4: like Yep. When

Speaker 8: he's making the

Speaker 2: the dolphin sound when he

Speaker 8: goes Oh. I don't know about that one but I didn't get to see that part but

Speaker 1: That's the whole genesis in Salesforce. Apparently, he came up with the idea while he was swimming with dolphins With a pod. Dolphin.

Speaker 8: I guess that's what what all the Good little Hawaii motifs are for.

Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. He loves

Speaker 8: It was a fun time. I mean, honestly, was a really fun company. Sure. You know, it was like for being in enterprise software, it was like one of the more fun experiences. Like, you know, people were kinda super laid back. Yeah. It's like all aloha and like Aloha. Or what? But learned a lot, you know. And I think like for me the big was like, wow, like all of enterprise software is basically just like a database with like some app logic and Sure. Like interfaces on top. Right? And like that's basically all that Oracle is used for. That's basically what SAP is. That's what Salesforce is. And if you could create like a way simpler version of that, like that's super intuitive, like that's that might be a big market.

Speaker 2: And Yeah.

Speaker 8: That was basically the the genesis of Airtable is, like, I wanna go and, like, basically PLGFI before that even was a term, like Yeah. This category. Sure.

Speaker 1: Sure. So, yeah, what was the what was the initial, like, hunting for a team, raising money Yeah. Building an MVP? Like, what was the Yeah. Step?

Speaker 8: I mean, the second time around, like, so this was my second company that Yeah. Airtable. You know, I wanted to do things a little bit differently than the first time. Like, the first time was kinda just go and, like, apply to YC, get in, do whatever it takes to get some traction. Like, it literally felt like this roller coaster. Right?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Every week, it was like, launch, get some, you know, sign ups, go and, like, raise money. And Airtable was a lot more premeditated. Like, spent we two and a half years building the product before even launching.

Speaker 1: Wow.

Speaker 8: Yeah. It was actually weirdly a a very parallel timeline to Figma. So, like, both Sure. Two and a half years the same time

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Launched around the same time Yeah. Very, like, PLG in both cases. Yeah. And maybe both kind of exploited, you know, the advent of like rich browser experiences Yep. Like for the first time. So like you And multiplayer. Yeah. You couldn't build like a rich real time like single page app experience before maybe like 2000 like 11/12 Yeah. Like, and really became like, you know, kind of really legit in like 2014 Yeah. '15 with like v eight becoming like Yeah. Really mainstream and dominant. Like, you know, just like the performance of the browser became there. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: So we built this product like, you know, and the premise was let's make it really, really simple for, like, anyone, like a small business owner, like, you know, podcasters Yeah. Or even, like, people within a larger larger company to build their own app or database. Yep. And they're, like, you know, FileMaker, Microsoft Access, like, some of these products existed back in the day, but never made the transition to the web. So Yeah. We kinda built it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Career started shortly after you guys kind of like came onto the scene Yeah. And my first ever business, we signed up for Airtable like day Yeah. One and still use it how many like eight years later something So like like just running like it's been core Yeah. Infrastructure every single day. That's awesome. Yeah. I appreciate it. And, like, evolved and Yeah. And, but It turns out,

Speaker 8: like, databases are pretty sticky.

Speaker 2: Right?

Speaker 9: Like, think

Speaker 8: about all the Oracle installs and, like, just random, like, large enterprises that are just still chugging away. Like, you've got your system of record in there and, like Yeah. Built a lot of, like, customization.

Speaker 1: Oracle database as a revenue line within Oracle is growing. Revenue. I'm I'm not sure. Is growing for the Oracle database. Not their their AI stuff is a separate thing.

Speaker 8: GPUs. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Very different valuations, but it is growing, which is I think a narrative violation that I think a lot of people would take. Talk about, like, the early go to market. I mean, you said PLG, but, like, who are you sending this to, like, start up friends? Are you trying to sell this into Salesforce on day one? Like Yeah. How how are you thinking about, like, enterprise versus mid market versus start ups versus, like, prosumer? There's, so many different routes you can go.

Speaker 8: Yeah. So this is, like, twenty thirteen ish. Right? And, like, at the time, there weren't that many I mean, there wasn't, like, really a PLG, like, thing.

Speaker 1: Right? Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean, Slack had, I think, just come out when we launched in 2015, so they had launched a little bit before. Dropbox and maybe Evernote were kind of best, like, PLG pioneers. Yeah. And they were both very, like, consumer prosumer first. So, like, solo, like, individual user first.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Then Drew Houston has the funniest riff on I I don't think he calls it PLG, but he calls it, like, the web growth the web two point o growth playbook, which is, like going viral. But he takes it a lot further and he's like, so you wanna sneeze on as many people as And he refers to that as like, if you send them Yeah. A file that you've sneezed on them. Oh, yeah. Then they might create an account. It's just like a much more like visceral way Yeah.

Speaker 8: A viral market. I can't even get this thing off.

Speaker 7: No. I mean,

Speaker 2: the thing about so so my first company is an ad network. Yeah. So we would you know, a company would come and say, I wanna advertise Yeah. Use a $100,000 budget. And then the company would put together a dashboard Yeah. Of, like, potential buys and then the person would go through. So it was inherently viral. Every customer that Right. Would have to use had to log in to Airtable and, like, use a product. That So was just happening at, like, massive scale.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah. And I I think that, like, that type of, like, you have some, like, data set, like, you know, maybe it's for your ad inventory or whatever. Maybe it's for, your CRM or whatever. You need to collaborate with it. Yeah. Like, it's a very fundamental construct in in just like how knowledge work is done.

Speaker 1: Right? Yeah.

Speaker 8: So I think, like, the lesson learned from here, like, the principle applied was, like, can you go after something that's so foundational that, like, it's always gonna be around. Right? Like Mhmm. I think with, the personal CRM thing, I'd kind of felt the, like, turbulence of, is this in vogue right now? Is it not? Like Yep. And I really wanted to go after something that felt like it's gonna be around for decades. Yep. And, like, what's more eternal than, like, people need, like Database. A database That

Speaker 2: you can do stuff

Speaker 8: past forty years of computing, it's probably gonna be around for the next forty. And, like, even now with agents, it's like the database layer actually becomes more important. Right?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 8: You don't want just, a bunch of ephemeral context windows, like, for for agents. Like, they need to, like, store and collaborate on data along with humans.

Speaker 2: So, you know, we kinda pick that

Speaker 8: as the vantage point. And a lot of the early customers were, like, startup founders, like, small business owners. But, like, interestingly, we had, like, we had written this, like, fake business plan. It was, like, basically, like Yeah. A vision deck more than an actual business plan. But, like, we had said, you know, conjectured, like, we're gonna have to go after, like, a long tail of, like, the kind of prosumer SMB audience, basically like Dropbox. Right? Yeah. And I think what was really surprising is it turned out to be a little bit more like Slack, where we got the most virality within larger So, like, there'd be a big, like, media company or, like, even like a scaled startup like a WeWork or something that would run all of their operations very quickly early on

Speaker 1: Mhmm.

Speaker 8: On Airtable and then just grow with the company. Right? Mhmm. And so Yeah. Like, I mean, WeWork was one of our early customers, had, like like probably 10,000 people, like Interesting. You know, when they were at their peak. Like, basically was like used by every almost employee there. Yeah. Right. And like a lot of their operations, building operations, etcetera, were just built on Airtable by default. And I kinda learned the the value of like having this, like, data gravity. Like, once you get enough data into a product like Airtable, like, it just kind of retains really well within the company and gains more and more usage.

Speaker 1: Yeah. How did you

Speaker 2: think Until until the company.

Speaker 8: Well, you against the industry What that you're

Speaker 2: so so I wanna get I wanna get to all the goods the the good part, like, right now and all that stuff. Yeah. But walk us through since this is your first time on the show, like, you know, you went from being one of the hottest companies Yeah. In tech during the whole no code boom, the like PLG boom, Zerp, like, it must have just been, you know, I mean, an insane experience. Then, like, there's kind of this reset in late twenty twenty two, How 2020 how has it been kind of, like, building out of that, you trough? And then, like, have you I'm assuming it sounds like you've been, like, very reenergized by this new this new opportunity

Speaker 1: Yeah. For

Speaker 8: him. I mean, one of the maybe benefits of like not being an overnight success, because we took like two and a half years to build the product. Sure. Even like from 2015 to twenty seventeen, eighteen, I would say like, we were getting like a steady compounding of growth, but it wasn't like Slack or like Dropbox where it just overnight became super easy. Right? Like, it felt like we had to really grind. We had to think about like, how do we need to like improve the product and increase the, you know, kind of like shareability and the scalability of it. So it's kind of a grind for like at least the first five years. And 2018, when we got our first unicorn round, it's kind of the first year where it felt like it was starting to get easy. Right?

Speaker 9: Mhmm.

Speaker 8: And yeah. So 2018 to 2021, like very fun, easy years, but also, like, you know Everything is so good. In the world, unlimited money, and like, you know, we got to raise like a big, you know, set of rounds like

Speaker 2: we How would you like a 100 x revenue model?

Speaker 8: Or I

Speaker 1: mean, yeah.

Speaker 8: And and just like the absolute scale of funding was like huge compared to prior art. Right? Like, now, I mean, you can raise, like, a 100,000,000,000, you know, like, if if you're opening eye. But, like, at the time, like, you know, we raised, you know, our first our first unicorn round was, like, a $100,000,000 round. We raised, like, another, like, couple 100 and then like a few 100 more. And then like our big round was our series f which was like kind of at the peak of like the markets. Yep. Raised 700 plus million in in that round.

Speaker 4: Wow.

Speaker 8: And an 11,000,000,000 billion valuation. And, you we know, still have like all of that money on the balance sheet and we're now like cash flow positive. That's amazing. I think like, you know, it's kind of a fun fun fun time to like, you know, kinda get to like ride that wave. Yep. And then, you know, but like I I always, I think for myself, knew like, you know, you have to build like a durable business. Right? And so like valuations are gonna like rise and fall. It's just gonna be like macro. But like, you know, ultimately either we build a great enduring business or we don't. And if we don't, then like, you know, you could be like a flash in the pan. Right? So Yeah. I think we were always like trying to focus and I tried to focus on like, what do we actually need to do to like, you know, compound growth, like go after the enterprise. Obviously, at the time, especially like, it was clear that was like the move. Right? You get PLG, but eventually you have to go into the enterprise and win like these big multimillion dollar contracts, like, become a really sticky system within these larger companies. And we did that. And, like, we're still doing that. We have, like, a bunch of the Fortune 500, like, running really critical operations on Airtable Yeah. Whether it's, content production at a big media company or, like, you know, like, fund operations at a company, like, you know, like, financial services company. Sure. So these are, like, the, like, almost,

Speaker 1: like, modern ERP explosions. Hire a different set of individuals to work on that that were already connected and knew

Speaker 3: that flow?

Speaker 1: Or was it something where, like, your best sales reps just sort of got bigger and bigger and leveled up?

Speaker 7: Or both?

Speaker 8: It was a a little

Speaker 5: of both.

Speaker 8: I mean, I think it's a different muscle. Like, I think Rolodex selling is, even at that time, like, you know, not that effective. Like, I think, like, just knowing somebody at a big company, like, doesn't even if you're, like, you know, very senior and they're very senior, like, doesn't actually help that much. Like, we've had some reps come in, like, they've had, like, a decade long relationship with, like, you know, the CMO of XYZ company. Sure. And I think that gets you like a phone call. It gets you like a meeting.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: But ultimately, like, buyers are wising up. Right? Yeah. And they have been for quite some time where it's not just like, oh, know this guy. I'm gonna like or, you know, gal, like, I'm gonna buy this, like, product from them. Like, you actually have to, like, show them why this is gonna help their, you know, help them in their job. Right? And help the Yeah. And so I think it became much more about, like, transitioning from, like, oh, people can just use it on their own and they'll figure it out on their own Yeah. To, like, starting to do more of a consultative sale, like, come in and say, like, okay, how can we solve like a really big problem for you? Yeah. And maybe like for one company it's like, how do I consolidate like my end to end operations for like how we do all of our brand planning, launching new products, all that. And that's kind of like it's like one part consulting, one part, like, just thinking about, like, a big enterprise scale solution, and then one part, like, be able to leverage the flexibility of our product, almost like in a Palantir like way

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Yeah. To show the customer, like, we can actually solve this really deep problem for you quickly.

Speaker 1: Is there any sort of, like, PLG motion or land and expand that happens in the Fortune 100? Like Yeah. Because there's some small team inside of Coca Cola or something that's using Airtable, and then you're able to use that as a demo or or jump off point that does happen.

Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean, it's like there are some companies where you just can't even get your foot in the door without the top down. Sure. Like a lot of big banks, like, we just we were firewalled out until we got some

Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. Top down intro. So they can't even

Speaker 8: They literally block you. Right? Okay. Yeah. Your IP is, like, blocked.

Speaker 1: So it's like,

Speaker 8: might be, like, hard wall,

Speaker 1: like Yeah.

Speaker 8: You know, request access. Okay. So, you know, there are some companies where you have to come in top down. But like there you know, I would say 70 plus percent of our current enterprise accounts, including the ones that are like now like 5 plus million in in revenue, like, originated from teams within the company organically adopting Airtable. Right? Sometimes it was kind of shadow IT. They just figured it out on their own. Yep. And they just like they showed real value from using the tool. Right? Yeah. Like they would build some real operation on it and say like, well, I've been waiting for like IT to deliver me this like old bespoke solution or some like crappy other vendor Yep. For like two years now. I got impatient and just built the thing myself.

Speaker 1: Yep.

Speaker 8: And that's like a big I think, you know, I think of like the enterprise landscape now as like, you know, there's plenty of dollars in enterprise. Right? Even now, like, you know, it's just shifting from like traditional software to now AI. Mhmm. But like, there's plenty of dollars. Right? The budget's there. But, like, the question is, you're not the only one going after it. And so, like, what's your kind of asymmetric wedge to get in there and, like, take those dollars? Right? And if you're a big company like a Salesforce, maybe it's, like, we already have the distribution. We have, like, the customer data in there. We're gonna go and attack adjacencies. If you're Airtable, we don't have, like, the scale of, like, a, you know, ServiceNow or, like, an SAP or Salesforce. Sure. What we did have is, like, the usability of the product. So, like, the PLP was, like, kind of the entry point. And then also, like, even when we pitched to other people in the company that hadn't used Airtable, they had, you know, probably heard about it from a friend, like, maybe the CMO's, like, you know, partner, like, uses Airtable in their company or we can go in and just show them, like, a really compelling demo quickly.

Speaker 1: Talk about AI. What are customers demanding? What have you rolled out? What where does AI fit in well? Where does AI take a backseat?

Speaker 8: Yeah. I mean, I think it's crazy because it's like we've we've seen like so many layers of disruption happening Mhmm. Almost in parallel. Right?

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 8: Like, you know, you think about like desktop to mobile, it was like a single form factor change. Kind of kind of easy almost Yeah. To like execute on. That was the one that I experienced at Salesforce. Like, the big thing at the time was like, Mark would tell every team, like, show me the mobile UI first before you show me, like, the desktop UI.

Speaker 1: Right?

Speaker 8: Yep. Like, go mobile first.

Speaker 1: Right? Yep.

Speaker 8: And, you know, it was, like, the right move and also kind of a simple move. Yeah. Now it's like, you've got at one level, like, obviously, every product should have, like, AI in it. Yeah. So, you know, we have the obvious stuff. Like, you can now talk to Airtable's assistant, like, copilot style, and have it do stuff on your behalf in the product. We have what we call field agents, which are kind of like the ability to map reduce AI calls against, like, all all of your data. So you can have like 20,000 customer records and run like, you know, AI agentic, like, you know, kind of tool calls, like search and like research about the company, like synthesize, like Hydrating bio for every single product. That kind stuff. Run at a time. Yeah. And like, you know, we do all that stuff. But to me, like, the more interesting, you know, kind of disruptions underneath that are like, one, like, you know, are people do people even want to come into your interface anymore? And this

Speaker 6: is Yeah. That's what I

Speaker 2: was gonna ask, like, why you care about, like, storing Yeah. The data in in a in a sort of safe, secure Salesforce,

Speaker 1: they just went like headless recently. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Like Yeah.

Speaker 1: Is there a plan for that or how are

Speaker 8: you Yeah. Gonna I think it's like think the right move is like hybrid headless. Mhmm. Right? Like, I think I think the whole look. Like, if you wanted just like a back end database, you could use like Postgres, like Subbase. Right?

Speaker 1: Like Yep.

Speaker 8: You know,

Speaker 5: it's and, you

Speaker 8: know, there's like PHP, my admin equivalents, like modern day ones. Right? Like Prisma has its own version of it. Yep. Like, that are okay or they're good. Right? Yep. Like, but like I think what most people actually want, especially in a business context, is like you want like the database Mhmm. But you want to have like proper permissioning, you want to have proper collaboration.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 8: And most importantly like you don't want to exclusively interface with the data through like an agent. Right? Like you want to do that a lot of the time. Yeah. But like it's really helpful to actually go in and see the code like see the actual data. Like I think of it as the equivalent of, you know, even though agentically you can like generate all your code and you should as a Frontier developer, like does that mean you never want to inspect any lines of code ever? Like, no. Like, you still wanna see like a diff of like all the actual like code files change whether that's in your IDE or in GitHub or whatever. And so I think the equivalent here is like you wanna be able to drop down into a really nice interface. And we've done some work around like kind of figuring out what what's the best blend of the two. Right? So like with ChatuchPN, for instance, we have a kind of a first class integration where you can go in through ChatuchPN and like interact with your data in Airtable and say like, pull me like all the customers that are like waiting for an Outreach for me and predraft like Outreach messages. Yeah. But then it can basically compose like a fragment of a view within the ChatGPT interface. So like you can actually see like Airtable Sure. But like, you know, kind of a part of Yeah. The

Speaker 2: So it's

Speaker 8: not completely headless. It's almost like you get to pull out like pieces of its face Yeah. At the right time on demand. And I think that's a really important kind of like UX form factor.

Speaker 1: Yeah. How are you thinking about speed in the context of AI? I feel like the models keep getting smarter, but they also keep getting slower, basically. Yeah. And while I'm extremely confident that I could point a deep research agent at a massive air table with 20,000 rows and get very good results. Like, a lot of times, I'm just in my email, and I wanna find one thing very quickly. And that feels like it has yet to be, you know, AI ified or at least, like, LLM ified. Yeah. It's very much it's very much like, okay, well, I should probably just fall back to SQL query or just some Boolean logic or

Speaker 2: just like

Speaker 1: vanilla search because I want this now.

Speaker 8: Yeah. I think both are gonna be really important experiences. And obviously, we have, like, you know, kind of great smaller and faster models like the mini, you know, Yeah.

Speaker 1: Mini and stuff.

Speaker 8: You know, that that are great for, like, more synchronous interactions Mhmm. And, like, within Airtable, like, you go do to Airtable or you use ChatuchPati with, like, one of the the smaller models, you get that, like, faster kind of almost, like, more, like, real time experience. Mhmm. But I do think, like, a really important class of work that will come to dominate, like, every frontier company or company trying to reinvent themselves to be frontier Mhmm. Is, like, figuring out how to operate in this new modality of, like you know, it's, the best developers today don't go and, like, sit there in front of their IDE and, like, synchronously, like, talk to the agent. You have, like, 30, you know, separate branches that are each being worked on by a different agent.

Speaker 1: Yep.

Speaker 8: And, like, you can have the agents continue to, like, update, you know, the branch based on human and other agent feedback. Right? So you can have, like, comments back or, like, you know, run, like, tests, etcetera. And I think this whole idea of, like, look. It's gonna take, like, hours for that entire loop to complete. Right? Like, agent pushes some changes. The changes get feedback from other agents or humans. Agent responds to that. Like, that whole loop could be hours, not just,

Speaker 1: like, minutes.

Speaker 8: So you're not gonna sit there and, like, watch it one at a time. Yeah. But the powerful thing about this is, like, each one is still actually operating faster than, like, a human engineer could have Mhmm. Like, back in

Speaker 4: the day.

Speaker 8: Right? Like when I think about like the speed with which like our early team at Airtable could build features and we had a very good team. Like one agent on one branch can, you know, do the work of like maybe three humans back in the day Mhmm. Operating probably in like three times the time. Right? So it's like literally like a 10 x kind of leverage factor

Speaker 2: Speed up.

Speaker 8: Just for one agent. But the best engineers are now able to multitask and kind of basically say, look, I'm gonna oversee my own little team of like 20 to 30 agents working concurrently. And so I think it requires like, it's almost like everybody needs to graduate from being an IC to, like, an IC manager of agents. Meaning, like, in every function, like, if you're, a VC analyst, your job should no longer be to go and synchronously research one company. It's like you're gonna go and research, like, 30 companies and do them all faster, better, and higher quality, right, like than than what you could before. And so it I think that's the greatest leap that is gonna be challenging for a lot of people in a lot of roles to make the leap on because it's it's a totally different mentality to like how you operate and what your role is Yeah. Than before.

Speaker 2: What are you pushing the the team to achieve? So

Speaker 8: a lot. You know, I think like there's there's basically like three different levels of self disruption we're trying to do at Air table. Right? One is, like, the core product itself, like, how do we reimagine that for an increasingly agent led future? So all the, headless hybrid type stuff we talked about and, like, you know, like, the best testament to that is, like, do we see, like, massively growing, you know, basically tool call volume from, you know, Chatchpati, Claude, any other agent products?

Speaker 1: Like Mhmm.

Speaker 8: Are people using Airtable more and more agentically? Yeah. And is it working smoothly for them? So that's, like, priority one. The second, though, is, I think we have to, like, really transform how we operate internally. Right? Like, clearly, like, the companies the best companies in the future are not just gonna hire, like, massive armies of people to do everything. Right? Like, they're gonna hire, like, people who can really effectively leverage agents. Right? It's so obvious that's happening in engineering where, like, you know, if you could hire one engineer who could be fully agentically leveraged, you get more output than, like Yeah. 30 kind of traditional engineers doing traditional engineering. So that's kind of one internal thing. But then the third is, like, I'm a strong believer that, like, you have to go and skate to where the puck is going like index against like the big title way of coming. Right? Like Amazon did this like back in the day against like the growth of the Internet. Right? Like they, you know, Bezos picked books and like, you know, e commerce because like he thought that would be the best way to index against the growth of the Internet. And so for us, like, we get that through Airtable and, like, kind of hybrid headless Airtable, but we're also placing a big bet on HyperAgent because HyperAgent is basically, like, taking all of the, like, excitement of frontier agents, like, I e, OpenClaw and, like, Yolo Yeah. Agents that can just, like, have access to your data and tools and do stuff, like, really, like, long running stuff, not, like, ten second tasks, but, like, ten hour tasks. Yeah. But for non coders. Mhmm. And we wanna do it in like a business friendly way. Right? So, like, you can go and like do this, deploy it into your company, run like agents across, you know, your entire company. And so that's kind of like a bet on if we believed Airtable, you know, ten years ago was, like, the most meta problem, like, largest problem we could work on, which is, like, software arguably is, like was the biggest and fastest growing industry at the time. Right? And, like, how do we go after that entire category and index against that? How do we now go against agents and say, we wanna build, like, the best agents platform that any business and any person can come in and use and just start building agents with, right, and deploying them into their company. Right? And so if we do that really well, then, we get to doubly win both as the data layer

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 8: But also kind of have a a bet on the the agent wave.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Last question. Should children learn c plus plus

Speaker 8: Definitely not.

Speaker 1: No. I think And is that because of c plus plus or because of the AI era?

Speaker 8: I think well, I mean, think both. Like, I think I think the fundamentals of good technical architecture are gonna be the most important thing, but that has let like, I think the abstraction that really matters now for creating value is raising up. Right? Like, it used to be at one point, like, you know, Bill Gates wrote, like, some of his first programs in, like, literally, like, machine code Yeah. And, like, would punch it into his, like, p p 10. Yeah. And, like, clearly, you could be a great startup founder or be a great software engineer and make lots of money, like, without having to go down to that level. And so I think now with agents, like, the bar has raised yet again where, like, what you really need is, like, good product business and, like, tech architecture sensibilities. Like Mhmm. How should this system work? Like, where should the different like levels of, you know, kind of responsibility belong? And like Yeah. If you can get really good at that, then you have super leverage. If you are just kind of like like learning the literal kind of like lines of code and how to write them that, you know, a lot of engineers were before, I think that's gonna be increasingly below the frontier line of like agents can just do it equally or better to humans. Yeah.

Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you Well, so

Speaker 7: much for

Speaker 1: coming on the show. Thanks for

Speaker 2: having you.

Speaker 1: Have a fantastic rest

Speaker 2: of Great your hanging. Talk soon.