Howie Liu

Build before the tech window slams shut Technology moves in cycles. When a cycle stabilizes, incumbents win. Giants like Microsoft and Salesforce secure their borders, making it nearly impossible for an upstart to break through. But during a technological shift, every single market position is up for grabs. That is exactly where we find ourselves today. Howie Liu, the founder of Airtable—now a ten-billion-dollar enterprise—understands this dynamic intimately. He has seen the evolution of web tech from the front lines. On a recent episode of the podcast My First Million, host Sam Parr asked Liu a simple question: if he were 21 today, without Airtable, what would he build? Liu did not offer vague, academic theories. Instead, he dropped seven distinct, highly actionable business models primed for aggressive founders. These are not modest SaaS ideas. They are massive, market-altering plays designed to capture immense value. Scale live shopping with virtual sales armies Live shopping is already a colossal force in Asia, driving hundreds of billions in gross merchandise value. Platforms like TikTok and Temu are rapidly exporting this high-energy commerce format to the West. Consumers love the raw, interactive experience of watching an influencer present products in real time. It feels like Twitch, but with a direct purchase button. The problem? Humans do not scale. An influencer can only broadcast for a few hours a day before losing steam. This limitation represents a massive opportunity. By utilizing advanced video avatar platforms like HeyGen, builders can create highly engaging, automated shopping channels. Imagine a virtual sales agent modeled after a major celebrity. Instead of broadcasting to a passive audience of millions, this avatar can hold thousands of personalized, one-on-one sales consultations simultaneously. Each buyer receives a custom pitch tailored to their shopping habits. The tech is ready; the market is waiting. Kill the robotic news feed with hyper-personalized agents Most modern digital publications are static. Even popular daily digests send the exact same curated text to millions of readers. It is a legacy format. The future of news belongs to interactive, conversational agents that act like your smartest, most well-read friend. Instead of reading a passive summary, users should be able to interrogate their news feed. You should be able to ask a custom agent to summarize global economic shifts and immediately follow up with deep, contextual questions. There are two clear execution paths here. First, entrepreneurs can build a platform similar to Substack that provides white-label AI tools to independent creators, allowing them to instantly generate highly styled, customized newsletters. Second, builders can design distinct AI news personalities. A news agent does not have to be a sterile, objective robot. It can be programmed with edge, wit, or a specific cultural lens, transforming daily news consumption from a chore into a highly engaging, addictive routine. Democratize private wealth advisors for average earners Ultra-wealthy individuals do not use basic budgeting apps. They hire multi-family offices and private CFOs who analyze balance sheets, project cash flow, and build bespoke long-term financial strategies. The average consumer has never had access to this level of sophisticated financial planning. Advanced reasoning models change this entirely. By linking portfolio aggregation tools like Kubera or high-end platforms like Addepar with conversational AI interfaces, founders can build a virtual financial advisor. This is not a simple calculator. This is an agent that understands fundamental investment theory, tracks your real-time net worth across dozens of accounts, and adjusts your budget based on your life goals. When market volatility strikes and panic sets with retail investors, a highly empathetic, human-like avatar advisor can talk them down, providing calm, data-backed reassurance. It offers the elite multi-family office experience at a fraction of the cost. Run the private equity playbook on legacy businesses Not every venture-backed startup needs to write code from scratch. One of the most lucrative strategies today involves applying the classic private equity playbook to traditional, low-margin service businesses. Consider property management, call centers, and business process outsourcing. These industries operate on razor-thin margins because they rely on massive, labor-intensive operations. By buying these legacy firms outright and integrating custom automated systems, you can radically alter their cost structure. This is already happening. Startups in Europe are actively roll-up buying property management companies and automating their administrative overhead. They are not firing staff; they are using automated efficiency to scale their client portfolios exponentially. This strategy turns stagnant, single-digit margin businesses into highly profitable cash engines. Replace standard email with an agentic command center Email has remained virtually untouched for over a decade. While premium clients like Superhuman made the interface faster, they did not alter the core workflow. Users still spend hours manually triaging messages, draft writing, and searching for context. Developers have recently gravitated toward Cursor, an integrated development environment that blends manual coding with powerful agentic assistance. Email needs its own Cursor. A next-generation email client should do far more than sort spam. It should run background research on every incoming sender, cross-reference your calendar and internal databases, and present pre-drafted, context-aware responses before you even open the message. For power users like venture capitalists, attorneys, and real estate brokers, email is where business happens. A product that saves these professionals five hours a week can easily command a premium price of two hundred dollars a month. Startups like Chief.so are already taking early steps in this direction, proving that the high-end productivity market is incredibly lucrative. Bet on unhinged consumer social models and uncensored search Every major technological shift introduces unexpected consumer behaviors. We went from watching television to watching other people play video games on mobile screens. No one predicted the rise of Twitch. In the era of virtual interaction, we will see entirely new social dynamics. Startups are already building group chats where half the active participants are virtual avatars. These experiences will become deeply integrated into youth culture. Additionally, there is a massive, underserved demand for unfiltered, objective information. Popular enterprise models are heavily censored by moral clauses and safety filters. They often refuse to answer sensitive historical or political questions. This has created a clear opening for less restrictive alternatives, such as the unhinged mode of Grok. Consumers want tools that prioritize raw learning and educational curiosity over corporate safety guidelines. The builders who dare to push these boundaries will capture a highly loyal audience. Claim your share of the new tech cycle The playbooks of the last decade are obsolete. The cost of building software has plummeted, meaning speed and creative execution are the only moats that matter. Whether you choose to automate legacy property firms or build the next great consumer social hub, the directive is clear. Find a friction point, build an aggressive solution, and claim your share of the market before the window closes.