Howie Liu

Co-founder and CEO at Airtable

Co-founder and CEO of Airtable for over 13 years, now reinventing the decade-old product in the AI era, known for becoming an IC CEO who gets into the code and leads initiatives directly, and for restructuring the company into fast-thinking and slow-thinking groups to accelerate AI investment.

The Visionary The Operator

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 80%

Execution & Craft 70%

Data & Experimentation 40%

Growth & Distribution 40%

Team & Leadership 65%

User Empathy & Research 45%

Key Themes

reinventing a mature product for the AI era IC CEO leadership model fast-thinking versus slow-thinking team structure hybrid PM-prototyper role evolution surviving public narrative attacks AI-native product transformation

Episode Summary

Howie Liu shares how he is reinventing Airtable for the AI era after 13 years, including restructuring the company into fast-thinking and slow-thinking groups to accelerate AI investment. He discusses the emerging IC CEO model where founders get back into the code and lead initiatives directly, explains why PMs need to become hybrid PM-prototypers, and reveals how he handled the viral tweet falsely claiming Airtable was dead. The core message is that every established company must ask itself how it would execute its mission with an AI-native approach from scratch.

Leadership Principles

→ If you were literally founding a new company from scratch with the same mission, how would you execute using a fully AI-native approach? If you can't answer that, find a buyer
→ Cancel all your meetings for a day or a week and go play around with every AI product that could be relevant — give people permission to explore
→ As a PM, you need to start looking more like a hybrid PM prototyper who has some good design sensibilities — the roles that can cross over into other functions have an advantage

Notable Quotes

"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 you should find a buyer."
— On the existential question every established company must answer in the AI era

"If you want to cancel all your meetings for a day or for an entire week and just go play around with every AI product you think could be relevant to Airtable, go do it."
— On giving teams permission to explore AI tools and products

"It really does become more about individual attitude. There's a strong advantage to any of those three roles who can cross over into the other two. As a PM, you need to start looking more like a hybrid PM prototyper."
— On how AI is changing the skills needed for PMs, engineers, and designers

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