Paul Rowsthorn
Co-founder at Airguides · Co-founder at HubMind
Paul Rowsthorn is co-founder of Airguides, an online marketplace for trips curated by professional travel storytellers such as photographers, writers and local guides rather than generic itineraries. Before starting the company, he worked as a business analyst, then quit his corporate job to travel for about 18 months, writing a blog that gathered a following and became the seed of the business. He has kept building Airguides through setbacks including the pandemic-era shutdown of global tourism, and is based in Noosa, Queensland. On Day One's Operator AI with Zachary King, he spoke about running Airguides with an AI co-founder named Amelia.
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of How Paul Rowsthorn Runs Airguides With an AI Co-Founder Named Amelia you want.
- 0:00 Cold open: the moment Amelia earned her seat
- 1:25 Airguides, and the problem Amelia was built to solve
- 3:44 Meet Amelia: one super-agent, not a swarm
- 7:15 Training Amelia into repeatable skills
- 8:39 Handing external agencies straight to Amelia
- 9:58 Cracking tourism's lead-attribution problem
- 12:38 The first OpenClaw win: automated agency reporting
- 14:53 The founder unlock: training staff instead of gatekeeping
- 23:39 From three-week product launches to one day
- 27:02 Under the hood: hardware, model switches, and near-quitting
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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