Harrison Hines, CEO of Fleek, on AI Agents, The Agent Layer, and The Future of the Creator Economy | Ep. 440

Harrison Hines, CEO of Fleek, joined the Cryptonews Spotlight Podcast to discuss the growing world of AI agents and virtual influencers and the coming shift from websites and apps to a new layer of internet interaction.

Drawing on his background at Token Foundry and ConsenSys, Hines outlined how Fleek is building tools that make it easy to create, manage, and monetize agents – and why this is the next big thing in consumer tech.

Agents Are the Next Evolution of Apps

“An agent is kind of the next evolution of a website or an app… You just conversationally explain what you want, and you get what you want done.”

Hines described agents as intent-driven interfaces that reduce friction, replacing app navigation with natural conversation. The goal is to bring the experience to users wherever they already hang out: in messaging apps, social feeds, or voice.

Fleek Is Building Shopify for Agents

“What we’re trying to create is basically like a Shopify-type platform… but for creating, managing, and monetizing social agents and virtual influencers.”

Fleek’s platform is designed to democratize the creation of AI-driven personalities, allowing non-technical users to build and earn from AI-powered social avatars.

From Hosting to the Agent Cloud

“We host over 100,000 apps and websites. It was natural to expand our capabilities to also host agents.”

Having already built one of Web3’s largest hosting platforms, Fleek is leveraging its infrastructure to serve the unique needs of always-on AI agents.

High-Quality Agents Need a Unified Stack

“The infrastructure to build great agents is super fragmented… avatars, voice, lip sync, platform integration – it’s all over the place.”

Fleek’s value lies in simplifying the development stack, bundling everything a creator needs – from content tools to avatar engines – into a single cloud-native product.

Why Social Agents Are the First Killer Use Case

“That brought us a lot of customers – virtual companions, AI girlfriends, influencers. That’s the direction we really wanted to focus on.”

Fleek found early traction in character-driven social agents, from companions to influencers. These use cases offer low-friction engagement and strong monetization potential.

Virtual Influencers Are the New Dropshipping

“What dropshipping was to our generation, virtual influencers will be to the next.”

Hines predicts that teenagers and young adults will make money by managing fleets of AI influencers, rather than selling cheap e-commerce products. It’s a blend of UGC, automation, and social capital.

Monetization Is Built-In

“You can sell subscriptions, gated content, brand deals – just like human influencers do.”

Fleek’s platform includes tools to monetize agents directly, opening revenue streams for creators through ads, sponsorships, and community access models.

Brands Don’t Want to Manage 200 Agents – But They’ll Pay for Reach

“Brands don’t want to manage these agents. What they want is social amplification.”

Rather than running fleets themselves, brands will likely hire agent creators, paying them to promote content across social platforms with predictable ROI and zero ego management.

Human-in-the-Loop Models Improve Content Quality

“Instead of fully autonomous agents, we’re starting with human-in-the-loop… like a marketing team reviewing posts.”

Fleek blends automation with human oversight to ensure content quality and brand safety. Over time, the system will evolve into more trustless delegation.

Virtual Companions Will Be Commonplace

“The average American has three friends and wants 15… Zuckerberg thinks the rest will be filled by virtual ones.”

Referencing Meta’s roadmap, Hines sees a world where AI companions become social defaults – but he wants that system to be open, not monopolized by a single tech giant.

Why Fleek Chose to Launch a Token

“Tokens are great for bootstrapping the supply side of a network – in our case, the virtual influencers.”

FLK is designed to incentivize early creators, enabling them to earn while building presence and helping Fleek reach critical mass in its marketplace.

1/ The $FLK token sale on @CoinList officially closed today and is fully sold out.

We hit our raise target with thousands of participants joining globally oversubscribed and fully unlocked with no cliffs or no lockups.

This is rare in today’s market, and we’re genuinely… pic.twitter.com/94QmVx2g8u

— Fleek ⚡ (@fleek) May 8, 2025

Owning the Monetization Layer

“We want to be an agent ecosystem anchored around monetization – not just tokenization.”

While many AI projects lean on meme tokens or vaporware, Fleek is focused on real transaction flow: agents promoting brands, selling access, and creating revenue streams.

Fans Can Share in Influencer Success

“You could distribute tokens to early followers… and share future revenue with the fanbase.”

In Fleek’s vision, fans can invest in and support virtual influencers, earning returns if those agents grow popular, similar to daily fantasy sports or social equity trading.

What’s Coming Next

“Before the end of this month, you’ll be able to build high-quality avatars, generate content, and launch in our marketplace.”

Fleek’s next release will allow anyone to start creating and deploying agents, with future updates adding platform integration, audience tools, and tokenized hiring.