--- schema: 1 type: video title: 'Hiring Employable Agents + Startup Battlefield Finals — Howie Liu, HyperAgent' description: >- What does it take to hire an agent the way you'd hire an employee? Then three agent-native startups pitch live for $100K. NEXT UP: AI ENGINEER CODE SUMMIT Join us in SF for the second annual AIE CODE Summit, Nov 10–12, our last flagship summit of 2026. Applications live now: https://aie.codes Howie Liu, founder of Airtable and HyperAgent, traces agent products from completions to chatbots, agents, always-on agents with heartbeats, and agents that orchestrate other agents. He shows a landscaping business run end to end on HyperAgent, with a triage agent, a surveyor agent, human approval and agents that learn from feedback. Then the Startup Battlefield: three finalists from HyperAgent's founding 500 pitch to judges Howie Liu, Theo (T3 Chat) and Joshua (HeyGen) for $100,000 in prizes. Comment IO takes the grand prize, Built by Foundry is runner-up and Kamad places third. In this video: - The progression of agent product form factors, from completions to always-on agents - A real agent-run landscaping business: triage, surveyor and human approval - Why agents should keep learning from every interaction - Live pitches from Kamad, Comment IO and Built by Foundry, plus judges' Q&A SPEAKER Howie Liu, Founder, Airtable and HyperAgent X: https://x.com/howietl LINKS HyperAgent: https://www.hyperagent.com HyperAgent inference credit offer: https://hyperagent.com/aie Comment IO: https://comment.io Built by Foundry: https://www.builtbyfoundry.io CHAPTERS 0:00 Howie Liu introduction 0:44 Hiring employable agents 2:19 From completions to chatbots 3:14 Agents and always-on claws 5:04 Agents orchestrating agents 6:33 Landscaping business example 10:53 Humans unblocking agents 12:34 Agents that learn from feedback 14:14 Humans as agent orchestrators 17:02 Try HyperAgent 18:03 Startup Battlefield begins 19:58 Judges, prizes and format 21:26 Kamad pitch 24:46 Kamad Q&A 29:46 Comment IO pitch 34:04 Comment IO Q&A 36:26 Built by Foundry pitch 39:35 Built by Foundry Q&A 42:41 Deliberation and recap video 45:08 Winners announced Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 in San Francisco. Subscribe for more talks from the engineers building with AI. AI Engineer: https://ai.engineer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer X: https://x.com/aiDotEngineer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aidotengineer/ #AIAgents #Startups #AIEngineer canonical: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/hiring-employable-agents-startup-battlefield-finals-b2613cc039d1 markdown: >- https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/video/hiring-employable-agents-startup-battlefield-finals-b2613cc039d1.md llms: null parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md' channel: aidotengineer updated: '2026-10-23T22:19:01.861Z' language: null children: [] videoId: EEt3ZSG4a1s durationSeconds: 2857 publishedAt: '2026-10-12T05:01:33.000Z' searchChunks: - ordinal: 0 text: null startSeconds: 12 endSeconds: 31 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=12' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 1 text: null startSeconds: 31 endSeconds: 53 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=31' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 2 text: null startSeconds: 53 endSeconds: 64 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=53' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 3 text: null startSeconds: 64 endSeconds: 143 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=64' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 4 text: null startSeconds: 143 endSeconds: 154 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=143' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 5 text: null startSeconds: 154 endSeconds: 198 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=154' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 6 text: null startSeconds: 198 endSeconds: 208 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=198' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 7 text: null startSeconds: 208 endSeconds: 306 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=208' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 8 text: null startSeconds: 306 endSeconds: 318 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=306' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 9 text: null startSeconds: 318 endSeconds: 395 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=318' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 10 text: null startSeconds: 395 endSeconds: 406 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=395' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 11 text: null startSeconds: 406 endSeconds: 657 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=406' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 12 text: null startSeconds: 657 endSeconds: 668 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=657' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 13 text: null startSeconds: 668 endSeconds: 757 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=668' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 14 text: null startSeconds: 757 endSeconds: 768 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=757' heldReason: rights - ordinal: 15 text: null startSeconds: 768 endSeconds: 864 watch: 'https://liquidgold.cc/watch/EEt3ZSG4a1s?t=768' heldReason: rights --- # Hiring Employable Agents + Startup Battlefield Finals — Howie Liu, HyperAgent What does it take to hire an agent the way you'd hire an employee? Then three agent-native startups pitch live for $100K. NEXT UP: AI ENGINEER CODE SUMMIT Join us in SF for the second annual AIE CODE Summit, Nov 10–12, our last flagship summit of 2026. Applications live now: https://aie.codes Howie Liu, founder of Airtable and HyperAgent, traces agent products from completions to chatbots, agents, always-on agents with heartbeats, and agents that orchestrate other agents. He shows a landscaping business run end to end on HyperAgent, with a triage agent, a surveyor agent, human approval and agents that learn from feedback. Then the Startup Battlefield: three finalists from HyperAgent's founding 500 pitch to judges Howie Liu, Theo (T3 Chat) and Joshua (HeyGen) for $100,000 in prizes. Comment IO takes the grand prize, Built by Foundry is runner-up and Kamad places third. In this video: - The progression of agent product form factors, from completions to always-on agents - A real agent-run landscaping business: triage, surveyor and human approval - Why agents should keep learning from every interaction - Live pitches from Kamad, Comment IO and Built by Foundry, plus judges' Q\&A SPEAKER Howie Liu, Founder, Airtable and HyperAgent X: https://x.com/howietl LINKS HyperAgent: https://www.hyperagent.com HyperAgent inference credit offer: https://hyperagent.com/aie Comment IO: https://comment.io Built by Foundry: https://www.builtbyfoundry.io CHAPTERS 0:00 Howie Liu introduction 0:44 Hiring employable agents 2:19 From completions to chatbots 3:14 Agents and always-on claws 5:04 Agents orchestrating agents 6:33 Landscaping business example 10:53 Humans unblocking agents 12:34 Agents that learn from feedback 14:14 Humans as agent orchestrators 17:02 Try HyperAgent 18:03 Startup Battlefield begins 19:58 Judges, prizes and format 21:26 Kamad pitch 24:46 Kamad Q\&A 29:46 Comment IO pitch 34:04 Comment IO Q\&A 36:26 Built by Foundry pitch 39:35 Built by Foundry Q\&A 42:41 Deliberation and recap video 45:08 Winners announced Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 in San Francisco. Subscribe for more talks from the engineers building with AI. AI Engineer: https://ai.engineer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer X: https://x.com/aiDotEngineer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aidotengineer/ #AIAgents #Startups #AIEngineer Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer/explore/video/hiring-employable-agents-startup-battlefield-finals-b2613cc039d1 · Channel: [AI Engineer](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/aidotengineer.md) > Search chunk text is held until public-source provenance is verified. ## Document chunks > Missing: no stored document chunks are available.