He AI-pilled his 8-figure D2C brand with Hermes agent | Benjamin Huang (Co-Founder of Omnidesk)

Ben Huang ran Omnidesk, a Singapore standing desk company, for eight years. Eight figure revenue, 40 staff, with seven direct reports. In one year he went from pasting reports into ChatGPT to two AI agents that brief him at 8am, pull his Shopify data daily, and grade his week. He shows his stack an always-on iMac and a Macbook Air; the update that made him leave OpenClaw for Hermes, and a Shopify POS app built in two days that cut checkout from 15 minutes to 2. He is now the founder of firstpress.ai. in this conversation: stop working on prompts. work on what the model already knows about you four files, state, priorities, decisions, voice, read by Claude Code and Hermes alike, plus the weekly review that rewrites them holly runs the house, mimi runs the business - two Hermes agents on an always-on iMac why he switched to Hermes after an OpenClaw update a Shopify POS app for 500 SKUs, built in two days, checkout from 15 minutes to 2 20 apps and a dashboard he stopped looking at the builders' trap ai gets us into, instead of doing copy this week four text files of your own. not a downloaded second brain a weekly review that reads your work log and asks if the priorities should change ramble your undocumented process into Whisper for half an hour, let Claude write the spec cheapest model, max effort. he says it holds up for agent tasks agents get a 1Password service account with its own vault, never your master password (Yaohong's setup) his operator context pack, free and public: https://github.com/benjaminn8/operato... hosted by Eric Tan and Yaohong Ch'ng. our guest: Ben Huang, co-founder and former managing director of Omnidesk, founder of firstpress.ai. chapters 0:00 cold open 1:19 for people who need fast visibility 4:10 eight years running omnidesk in a data-driven way 10:46 openclaw or hermes? 20:15 live demo: two agents on two devices 33:47 chief of staff agent 39:30 live demo: shopify pos app, built in two days 49:19 trap: building infrastructure instead of doing the work 57:04 leaving omnidesk, a month offline, and a tea business 1:01:59 quickfire: books, films, favorite place tools: Hermes, OpenClaw, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, Obsidian, Telegram, Shopify POS, Shopify Admin MCP, Whisper, 1Password, Google Home, Buzz learn along: context: what the AI already knows about you before you type. build this up and the prompt gets short context layer: the few files every AI session reads first agent: an AI that runs on its own schedule and does jobs while you are away Hermes, OpenClaw: open source programs for running agents on your own computer Claude Code: Anthropic's AI in the terminal, the text window, not a chat box. he uses it for reports, not only code cron job: a task that runs at a fixed time, like an 8am briefing hook: an automatic action after every AI turn. his logs the conversation to his notes skill: a saved routine the AI runs on request POS: the till. Shopify POS takes payment at a physical stall SKU: one specific sellable item. same desk, different colour, different SKU MCP: a standard plug between an AI and another company's system SOP: the written way a job is done DTC: a brand that sells online direct to customers what Ben asked for DTC founders with an existing business, two to five million in revenue, who want AI in it and do not know where to start: talk to him. coffee or a Guinness LinkedIn:   / benjaminhuangjr   firstpress.ai: https://firstpress.ai mentioned Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami. the only fiction he reads Jewel Changi Airport, his special place in Singapore "you are never too old", Gary Vaynerchuk, the line he goes back to Garry Tan's second brain template, tried and dropped Buzz, Jack Dorsey's agents plus humans chat tool https://buzz.xyz/ watch on Spotify / Apple podcast / Snipd / wherever you listen to your podcasts connect with us Eric:   / erictisme   Yaohong:   / yaohongchng   Substack: https://substack.com/@coderiff email: code.riffs.ai@gmail.com Code Riff, interviews with leading minds and practitioners in AI so you can flourish and have fun with ai. tools we use Buzzsprout (podcast hosting, our referral link): https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_...