Ep: 23: Wade Foster, CEO and Co-founder of Zapier | The Entre Show Podcast

Welcome to The Entrepreneur Show. This is your host, Michael Mehra. I'm the CEO and founder of ENTRE, a social network for entrepreneurs, investors, and freelancers. On this show, we interview the top CEOs, venture capitalists, angel investors, and founders. Connect with me and thousands of other like-minded people by signing up for free at joinentre.com or download our mobile app on iOS and Android. On this episode, I'm interviewing Wade Foster. He's the CEO and co-founder of Zapier, the multi-billion dollar software company that helps people automate things on the internet. We dive into his full story on how he started Zapier at Techstars Startup Weekend, how he got into Y Combinator, and then went on to raise his seed round from many prominent investors. And how he didn't take any additional capital after that. He didn't raise any future rounds to become a unicorn. He grew organically and through his customers. We talk about hiring and how to build a team culture and really a lot of other exciting things that I hope you'll find really, really interesting. We recorded this live on Clubhouse, so you will hear some audience Q&A at the end. And if you want to be part of those in the future, just follow us on Clubhouse or follow us on ENTRE. We're going to be doing a lot of interviews on there as well coming up very shortly. Hope you enjoy this episode.

All right, all right. I think we are all set. Welcome everybody. Thanks so much for being here. And really, really excited for our guest today, Wade Foster. He's the CEO and co-founder of Zapier. And I'm sure a lot of you know what Zapier is or have seen and heard of the company before. They have a very interesting platform. They help a lot of people automate on the internet and connect apps and software and all sorts of things. I'm a huge fan of the company. I've used it myself, and I know a lot of other entrepreneurs and founders who use it as well. So welcome, Wade. Really glad to have you here. Thanks for taking the time.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Michael.

Really, really appreciate it. And if you don't mind, I'd love to start— I mean, you have an interesting background yourself. If you could let people know really how you got started in this entrepreneurial world. I know Zapier has an interesting story and kind of how we got connected too through Matt, who actually met you at Startup Weekend. So walk us through what happened that weekend and walk us through what happened on Startup Weekend and how the idea of Zapier came to life.

Sure. A lot of people, a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, grow up like, you know, selling candy bars on like the playground and stuff like that. That was not me. I definitely sort of grew up in a more conservative town. My dad had a state job, my mom's a pharmacist. I didn't have a lot of exposure to entrepreneurship and small business in my sort of immediate family. And so I just sort of grew up going to school, doing my thing, trying to get good grades. It felt very normal, I guess, way to go about it. I didn't really get interested in entrepreneurship until the financial crisis in '08. I was a junior in college then and a good student, but clearly not good enough to get a job. In '08, folks were just not hiring. They just sort of shut things down and were— it didn't matter how good your grades were or like, you know, your extracurriculars or anything like that. And so I sort of like went back to the drawing board and was like, I'm going to have to figure out, you know, what am I going to do here? Was lucky enough to find a small company in Columbia, Missouri. It's a 5, 6, maybe 7-person software team that was working on this software program for students. And I talked them into hiring me as a marketing person and just really fell in love there with like the, with building software. Like I got exposed. We used, remember using things like MailChimp and Basecamp and Wufoo and like all this stuff. And I was like blown away by the fact that like anyone on the internet could go sign up for these tools pay someone some money and you never have to meet somebody. And they're like really useful. And that just sort of like got me hooked. And from that moment, I was just trying to figure out like someday I want to do something, like I want to build my own software. I want to get involved with this somehow. And so I spent the next several years just honing a whole bunch of different skills. I learned how to do product management. I learned how to write some code. And most of these things I didn't get very good at, but I got good enough to to be like, you know, I guess barely competent, that's probably the right way to describe it. And one of my co-founders, Brian, and I had started like hanging out a ton, playing a bunch of music. We were in a jazz blues quartet together, and Brian had this idea of making it really easy to integrate these various tools, Mailchimp, Wufoo, QuickBooks, Basecamp, you name it. And there was an upcoming startup weekend in Columbia, Missouri. And so we're like, hey, that sounds fun. Why don't we go do that there and see what happens? And so we went to that weekend, teamed up with our other co-founder Mike, built the first prototype, just had a ton of fun like hacking away on this thing, building the first prototype. And after the weekend ended, we were like, well, maybe we should just keep working on this. And being in Missouri, there's not a lot of funding. That's not really a thing that you do there. And so we kept our day jobs. Mike was still in school and we just started working on this thing nights and weekends. You know, we would do the day job thing. We'd usually go get some, like, takeout Chinese and then we'd work from 6, 7 o'clock at night to sometimes as late as like 1, 2 a.m., just trying to figure out how to get the first version and prototype of Zapier out to market. So that's, that's kind of where it all started.

Super interesting, and definitely familiar with the, uh, the Chinese nights and the late nights for sure, um, no doubt about it. Um, but yeah, I mean, really interesting. I actually have gone to a couple Startup Weekends myself. I, um, and help mentor, uh, there. I love the concept, and it's, it's a phenomenal thing that, that Techstars puts on. And, uh, I'd love to now talk about, okay, what happened after that? Because I know you got into Y Combinator and share with us those next steps and how you went from turning this into a nights and weekends thing and kind of like a side hustle or getting to that, that point where now you can actually turn this into a real startup, a real business, get some real traction in the product out the door with some momentum.

Yeah, so we, um, you know, had started working nights and weekends on this thing. I think YC had its application coming up maybe in like 2 weeks after that Startup Weekend event. And so we went ahead and applied and, you know, we're like, hey, maybe we could get accepted into this and that can help sort of kickstart the business. Unfortunately, they gave us sort of just the blanket template rejection. They were sort of like, hey, you know, y'all, looks, you know, it looks like a great idea, but, you know, doesn't gonna make the cut. Which, you know, for us was kind of like, well, that's fine, but we're gonna see if we can, keep working on this thing. And so, uh, we just kept plowing away, uh, trying to really get a prototype, a beta product ready that we could give access to some folks. Uh, and then once we had some folks using it, it was all about how can we make it good enough that they want to keep using it. Uh, and then once we felt that they had it, it was good enough that they keep using it, we felt like, okay, maybe we can now launch this thing. Um, and that took us you know, 6, 8, 9 months to like get to that point where we felt like it was good enough to do a launch. And coincidentally, it just sort of happened to be around the same time that YC had applications open for the next batch. And so we went ahead and applied again the second time. We had a lot more progress though. You know, we had, I think, 500,000 people in a beta. We had another, I think, 10,000 people on a waiting list. We had some YC companies that were using us and, you know, so we thought our chances were a little bit better. So we went ahead and applied a second time and that time they were like, hey, yeah, we see the progress. We see that you all are capable of, you know, we think building a company here and they were willing to accept us in. And so we, at that point in time, I had already gone full-time. I'd sort of worked it out with my wife who was a teacher that we would just live off her salary in a, $500 a month, 2-bedroom apartment in Columbia, Missouri. So that is one of the perks of starting a company in the Midwest is its cost of living is really cheap. And so we just sort of made things work there for 4 or 5 months before YC where we were just living off her salary. My co-founders were still part-time on it at that point in time. But with the YC acceptance, everyone was full-time, or all in at that point. And we moved out to California and then just started like focusing on like, how do we really make a business out of this thing?

Yeah, I mean, really, really interesting. And I love it. I didn't actually know that you guys got rejected the first time from YC. So that's a funny story. And I'm sure they're glad that they gave you a second chance there for sure, because I think you're probably one of their best investments that they've ever made. So a lot of people wonder about YC, and, you know, there's— it's kind of like this whole, you know, culture and community of Y Combinator founders and investors.

I—

and a lot of people don't know what it's like, or they want like a sneak— they want to peek in, but they can't get access. So what was it like going through that experience? How much that helped you? How much do you recommend YC or, and/or other accelerators and stuff like that for founders? Do you think it's something that a lot of founders should be considering as they're starting out? Should they be looking into doing?

Yeah, I can't speak for other accelerators because I haven't done them, but for YC, I certainly recommend it. But I think it's for reasons that are not necessarily super obvious to folks. Um, for YC, they do such a good job of publishing for free all of their advice. Uh, you can go watch Startup School for free on YouTube. You can go read PG's essays. You can go to YC and read like all the things that they tell you to do. When you get into YC, it's no different. It's not like they hold back, you know, the best tips for people that are in YC, it's all out there. They're all sharing it. So if you want to self-serve and do it yourself and figure it out along the way, you can. I think the thing that we got in particular out of YC was a little bit of money. That was nice. But it was really the ability to go all in and focus on this thing. We had two co-founders that were part-time at the time. And so being able to really have that commitment was really valuable. You know, the fact that we moved from Missouri to California meant that we were kind of in an environment that didn't have a lot of distractions for us. And so we ate, drank, slept Zapier for, for 3 months and made a huge amount of progress. Certainly the most productive time in my lifetime was those, those 3 months there. And so I think the, the sort of focus goes a long way and then just being around other people who are similarly focused and similarly driven Creates a bit of like a sort of friendly but competitive environment where you're sort of like, hey, I kind of want to, you know, I want to do as good, and I don't want to be the one that lets this batch down. You're sort of representing everyone there. And so I think just being a part of a community like that, it levels up your ambitions for sure. You know, certainly coming from Missouri where there wasn't a lot of people who were trying to do stuff like we were, to being ultimately switching gears to where it's like everyone's trying to do this sort of thing, it changed our perspectives on what was possible, I think.

Yeah, that's really, really interesting. It seems like being in that environment alone just helps with the mindset and being able to focus and be around like-minded people goes a long way when you're doing startups. It's one of the reasons why—

Yeah.

Just having that community, other people to see how they're doing it, learn from each other and be around similar-minded people. I think it really helps a lot. It's one of the main reasons why I started Ontra was because I just didn't have that community of other founders to talk to and be around. So really, really interesting stuff. And I mean, After YC, your story gets, you know, it goes from this startup to now, you know, one of the fastest growing internet companies, and you have done it so differently than other typical, you know, Silicon Valley companies because I mean, I respect you because you're from the Midwest, I'm from Pittsburgh, so, you know, St. Louis and Missouri is kind of similar-ish and not necessarily known for, you know, the massive funding rounds, but I respect you so much for that, and I look at your example as something that, you know, building a sustainable business and building a business where you can actually skip rounds of funding, not have to rely on continual venture capital raises. Walk us through, for people who may not understand your funding journey, how you approach that. Was that your thought process from the beginning is, let's build a business where we don't have to keep raising venture capital? Because you guys have, you know, you're a tech startup, you know, a unicorn, and you haven't really raised that much capital at all. So walk us through that approach and how you went about it and share that story on your fundraising journey.

Yeah, I mean, we were certainly, I would say, predisposed to like a more bootstrap model from the get-go, you know, the place I'd worked before started Zapier is this company called Veterans United in Columbia. Two brothers founded this thing 50/50, never raised a dime. And they'd done that for several businesses. And, you know, they'd sold two businesses before that. And then Veterans United, while I was there, I was only there for like 10 months. I think I was like employee 500. And by the time I left, they were like 900 or something like that in a 10-month period. And so, you know, I think we'd seen that like you were able to build things and do them profitably and do them scalably. And so just getting to see that up front meant that we were already a little bit skeptical of folks who, like, would come in and say, "There's only one way to do this." And I think, you know, VC world tends to, you know, tout their way of doing things as sort of the only way. And it's certainly a way, and it can be a good way for some entrepreneurs, but it doesn't have to be the only way. And so I think that exposure made us just a little more, I guess, thoughtful. I don't want to give ourselves too much credit, but it just sort of was like, you know, we knew that we could chart our own course, I guess, is really what it boiled down to. And so, you know, but we weren't totally against the idea. When we took the money from YC, we raised the seed round in 2012, a year in. That was about $1 million, which at the time was a pretty normal seed round nowadays. That seems tiny in comparison. And we thought— we took that because, one, we weren't at a profitable level yet. We're living in California now, so the cost of living had totally changed. And we felt like we wanted to just have a little bit of a buffer to be able to see this thing through. But the way we spent that money was we treated it like it was the last money we were ever going to raise. We didn't expect to get more money out of that. And it forced us to really focus on understanding what worked inside the business model. And it was, you know, the 3 founders that really had to figure it out. Like, how does this work? And so all the skills that it took to run and operate that business existed within those 3 business, the 3 people. So then when it came time to like thinking about getting extra help on, it was really clear to us where we most needed the help because we were doing those jobs. So we knew right away, okay, we need help on customer support. We were waking up and spending, you know, from the time we woke up till 3 o'clock in the afternoon just answering support tickets. So we knew that if we could get help there, uh, it would allow us to pour back time into the features that these customers were asking for, the bugs that they were encountering. Uh, and so we started there. Then it was like, okay, the next problem we're running into is that we can't just build this stuff. Fast enough, so we hired 2 engineers. But we were always paying attention to the balance sheet, the cash flow statement, and making sure to never lose too much money. I think our highest burn that we ever had at Zapier was $20,000 in 1 month, which is quaint compared to today's standards. And by 2014, I'd been paying close attention to the financials, and I was like, you know what, I'm pretty sure we could flip this thing to being profitable if we wanted to. And so we did. We just sort of were very measured about how we hired. Hiring is your biggest expense. And, you know, we were— we became profitable fairly easily there. Now we had a lot of advantages going for us. Low customer acquisition cost is super critical to doing this. If you have an inter— like a heavy enterprise sales motion that requires you to have sales folks up front, that means you gotta, you know, spend the time to hire recruiters. Those recruiters got to bring those sales folks in. Those sales folks have salaries that they're, you know, getting paid before they're actually productive. It might take them 3, 6 months. And so, you know, you're spending a lot of money up front before they're actually generating cash. In our model, we're generating customers via word of mouth, via search, via partnerships. All that is like low or no-cost customer acquisition models. And that allowed us to have low prices, good prices. And as soon as that person started paying us, that money was ROI positive. You know, we would be ROI positive in month 1 basically for the longest time. And so if you have a model that looks like that, fundraising is not as needed to grow your business. And so that was another thing that I think made it possible for us to build the business in the way that we did it.

Really, really interesting. I hope people were paying attention to that because I thought you hit on a few really key things there. Low customer acquisition costs and then hiring kind of as needed and as your executive team saw that the workload, workload on themselves was getting to the point where it was no longer sustainable. And I think a lot of times now it's, it's more of company— these companies are just hiring because that's what, you know, they do when they raise these rounds. Um, I, I, I really love that, that strategy and that thought process going into it. Um, going on top of that, when you, when you did hire and when you started building this culture and this team, um, to now where you have many, many employees How did you guys look at that? Were you focused on finding someone who fit the skill set? Were you looking for someone who fit the culture? How did you approach that? Did you hire any freelancers along the way? Did you hire any agencies, or were you more focused on bringing people on that could be really, you know, along for the long haul, employees that were in this for the long run with you?

Yeah. Uh, we— so the answer is both. Like, we cared about folks that were going to grow the culture and be a skill set fit. In the early days, we had a philosophy that, um, broke along the ways, but in the early days it was really useful, which was don't hire till it hurts. And so that meant we were doing these jobs, we understood these jobs, which made it really easy for us to write job descriptions because we were like, we know exactly what this person is going to come in and do. They're going to come in and take over and own this thing. And we expect, we want them to evolve it in these ways, XYZ ways. So it made it really easy for us to identify the types of folks that could be successful. And it made it easier for us to take chances on people because we knew, you know, a lot of times when you don't know the job description really well, you're relying on proxies of value. So you're saying, oh, they worked at this company with the same job title, or they got this degree from this school with this way. And as a result, like, you're in a more competitive job environment versus us. We could step back and say, this person may not have done this at a, you know, place that has a fancy, you know, a really cool hot company or something like this, but they're demonstrating all the skills and competencies of what this job entails. And so it allowed us to take bets on people, uh, in those early days that I don't think that other companies were as willing to do. So that was a big piece of it. And, you know, it also, we also were able to step back and say, what are the crucial things that make someone successful inside this company? Because we were doing those jobs, we knew what it took, and that allowed us to establish our values. And so we have a really strong value system as well that we lean on as part of our hiring rubric, as part of our performance review rubric, that is important too. So it really is skills and culture that sort of add up to someone being great. Um, so that was certainly for full-time roles, but there were areas where we certainly leaned on freelancers for work at times too. You know, we had a lot of freelancers in particular for content side of the business, uh, folks that were contributing to the blog in a variety of ways. Um, you know, so we did look for other ways to sort of scratch work itches. Some of that stuff worked, some of it didn't. Um, you know, very, very early on. And then over time, we certainly have opted, I think, more towards full-time jobs more of the time, but we, we still work with agencies and freelancers and a whole bunch of stuff to sort of fill in the blanks and gaps that we have in specific spots.

Very interesting. That makes a lot of sense, and I really appreciate you sharing all of that. I think it It just goes to show how great of a culture you have been building at Zapier with that philosophy, really. I want to get into a couple of more recent things now. You recently did raise a round of funding. It was kind of undisclosed, but you had some big investors like Sequoia involved with that. What made you want to raise a new round of funding after, you know, really just building the business without funding for so long? Was it to, you know, let some early employees be able to cash out and sell some stock? What was going through your head when you decided to raise a new round of funding recently?

Yeah, so to clarify, we didn't actually raise a new round of funding. This is entirely a secondary transaction. So this was very much a case of— Gotcha. Long-time investors who are, for whatever reason, want some liquidity here. In Sequoia, there was very much a willing partner to do that. That's what we allowed to happen in there. Of course, Sequoia is a phenomenal investor, a great partner, and it's nice to have them on the cap table and here contributing for the next chapter of Zapier.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I wasn't quite sure how that played out, but yeah, it did seem like a secondary offering and a liquidity event. So, uh, no, it's, it's great. And, uh, the other recent thing I would like to, uh, get your thoughts on too is the, your first acquisition of Makerpad, which, uh, they built a phenomenal, uh, no-code community. I've been following Ben and them for a while now. And I have some other friends in the no-code space. So I'd love to have you speak to that a bit and get your thoughts on kind of the no-code space in general and what you think of this as Zapier is obviously one of the major leaders in this space. But walk us through that and what made you want to acquire them and kind of contribute back to the no-code community.

Yeah, I've been following along with what Ben has done with MakerPad since its inception. I remember an early tweet he'd shared that was like, hey, watch this video of me creating— I think it was an Airbnb. Clone, uh, and I watched that video, uh, and I was just like blown away. Um, you know, I think he's, uh, found a way to really push the limits of what a lot of these modern tools like Zapier are capable of doing and inspire a lot of people, um, to do similarly and realize that like, hey, I don't need to be, you know, this incredible engineer to build stuff. Um, you know, I can just be curious and interested and there's enough tools these days that I can build things for myself and scratch my own itch, which I think is so powerful. And so, you know, just getting to sort of know him and watch him build that community up over the last couple of years, and, you know, seeing that our visions were aligned for what the future— it just felt more and more like, hey, maybe there's an opportunity for us to sort of merge here and do this together. I think there's a big opportunity for software companies to align themselves with the communities they serve as well too. You know, I think we're great at building software and products, Makerpad has established a passionate community, great education source. And so I think there's just a really sort of a peanut butter and jelly thing going on there where you can have those two coexist and you get something even better as a result of it. So that sort of was the inspiration around it. And, you know, I think exciting stuff to come more, you know, Ben is launching their first cohort-based course here actually on Monday. So, Be exciting to see how folks, how that gets off there. I'm pretty eager to see what happens.

Yeah, I know, that's great. I'm definitely gonna follow along with that as well. And yeah, I think like you're saying, it made so much sense. I think almost every company is trying to figure out how they can build a community around their product, service, software, you name it now, and, or acquire other communities. So I think you guys are definitely Yeah, you definitely did a great job with that. And like you said, it makes so much sense with what they've built and what you guys are doing. And I know they were— you guys were already partnered and they had a ton of tutorials on how to do things with Zapier on their site already to begin with. But really, really interesting stuff. Before we— I would definitely want to start opening this up to some questions from the audience. If people want to start raising their hands, we'll bring a couple people up before we wrap up here. In a little bit, but I'd love to have you talk about— I was doing some research and I came across this article that you wrote about the lost art of the soft launch. And I want to get your thoughts on this because it's something that I've been thinking about for a while. We actually, we've done a few launches for Ontra. Over the last while. We recently last night did like a small team soft launch for a new product too. So I'm curious this, and I think it's something that might be really, really helpful for a lot of the people listening if they are product people or building a product for the first time or entrepreneurs building software and a number of different things. But I'd love to have you share your thoughts on this and walk us through what you meant by by this article and how you guys approach launches.

Yeah, I think a lot of folks sort of are worried about like you're only going to get one chance at like launching a thing. And so they're like overly private about what they're working on, like stealth mode and stuff like that. And there's certainly folks that I think can pull that off. Like maybe if you're a super famous entrepreneur, you want to be extra quiet about what you're working on because your personality is going to draw stuff in. But for most of us, that's not us. And so, you know, just sort of building the things, making it available so that you can get some early feedback, get some early stuff, and then making a big, bigger deal out of it is generally just a better approach. I remember the story of the Airbnb crew, and, you know, if you hear them talk about it, they're like, we launched 5 times, and it was because the first 4 times nobody paid attention. And that's like the nice benefit, I think, of a soft launch is that if you launch and nobody cares, well, you can try again and ignore the fact that you launched already because no one knows about it. Your next launch is not— only you're the one that knows that it's your second launch. You and maybe the 3 other people who happened to notice the first time around. That's the nice thing about these software launches is that they're pretty private by default. I do think you can get away with just like, get that early feedback is so much more important than I think a big bang of a launch.

Totally agree. And thanks for walking through that. And I think it's something that now you're seeing a lot of people, especially on Twitter, do the whole build in public thing. And it's definitely helping. I've seen a number of founders it worked really well with. We've been, you know, really open with our community and our beta users and getting them involved in the product even before it's ready. And anyone that wants to try stuff out, like, we're very open to that, that stuff too. So I totally, totally love it. Before we open it up here to some people, I'd love to get your thoughts on really just the future of this whole industry, right? Like, Automation is here. AI, you know, machine learning. There's so many things that are coming with no-code and people being able to build products and software easier and faster. And I think it'd be great to have you shed some light on where you think the industry is going, where you think kind of the future of work is heading, you know, and any, any thoughts or ideas or what things that you're interested in in this industry in general going forward now?

Yeah, I think the thing I'm really excited to see is automation for people. I think the way the mainstream media often talks about it is this like, you know, scary overlord is coming to get your job sort of thing. That's not at all what we see with Zapier. We see a ton of small businesses adopting this and able to compete at a bigger scale in part because they have access to automation. And so I am really excited about people who are working on building tools that make this stuff more accessible. This is why low-code, no-code is such a great space to be in, is because it's bringing these skill sets that historically have been only available to engineers. The 1% of society could build things. But now with these tools, all you have to have is an idea and some creativity, and you can make some stuff happen. You can scratch your own itch. You can build something that solves a problem. For me, that is the opportunity that comes with that is a little bit unfathomable. It's a paradigm shift in who can make stuff. I don't think any particular person can say, oh, we expect to see XYZ occur. Human creativity is the thing that is getting unlocked here. To me, that is an exciting thing to see play out.

I totally agree. I think we're on, even with what has transpired over the last couple of years, if the tools that were available like Bubble and Adalo and Webflow and stuff like that, I wish these were available when I was starting out 4 or 5 years ago because I probably would've gotten to where I am a little bit faster or at least built my first MVP a lot easier and faster. Along the way. And I think the important thing is helping people get to that idea, like the validation phase as fast as possible. And it's like, does anyone even want this? Well, let's build something. And before you would have to have spent months and months and get engineers and all of these things trying to build something. So tools like Zapier and others are helping people so much just get these products out faster, which I absolutely love. And I think you guys are doing phenomenal work in the space and excited to see what transpires over the coming years. So having said that, I'd love to— it looks like we have Matt up here too. So Matt's the guy that actually introduced us to each other. And Matt, I don't know if you had a question or just wanted to say hi, but Thanks for being here, man.

Yeah, I can't say that I'm an expert on this yet. You know, we've only done it once. There's a lot of people who are better at it and more experienced, but I think one of the things that I had heard from others who've done M&A is, one, you know, you definitely want like a values and visions alignment between the sort of leaders of those operations. If you don't have that, it's not going to work very well. And then you have to figure out from there, like, how embedded do you all need to be in the day-to-day operations? You know, in the case of Zapier and Makerpad, you know, we weren't going to fold in Makerpad to the core operations of Zapier, at least not immediately. So we're keeping it fairly standalone and operated independently. And so that means, you know, we have like separate Slack instances and stuff like that. And that allows for Makerpad to keep doing their thing, the thing that makes them magical and awesome without having to worry so much about, you know, this— Zapier is now a 500-person company and we have a whole bunch of systems and processes for stuff. And that's great for the scale that we're at, but maybe not appropriate for the scale that Makerpad's at. And so that was one thing that, you know, we're, we're going about to try and help everybody sort of get the best out of each other. But we're learning. We'll see. Time will tell if that's the best strategy at play here.

Thanks so much, Matt. Looks like we have Nadia. Nadia, did you have a question for Wade Foster?

Yeah, thanks for the question, Nadia. I think the way I've often thought about competitors— Jeff Bezos said something really like that resonated with me once, which was, you know, we serve at the pleasure of customers. And so, you know, we try and stay really focused on what do our customers need, what do they care about, and really just sort of race towards serving them. I feel like if we do that right, we'll be successful over the long haul. We've certainly seen that play out over the last decade. There's been a lot of sort of me too Zapier products. Many of those aren't around anymore. And You know, I think a lot of times that was because they were trying to be too much like us and not enough like what the customers really needed them to be. Now, that doesn't mean we should be ignorant of what our competitors are doing, especially in the case of where they're being successful with customers. If there are customers that are picking other products that we think they should actually be picking Zapier, we should understand why that is, because that means we're missing something there. Now, if they're picking a competitor and we don't think that that customer is a good fit for us, then that's fine. But if it's a place that we want to win and we're not winning, we got to know why and figure out how to address that. And that could be, you know, product gaps that we have. That could be our marketing's wrong, our message wrong. It could be our service is wrong. It could be a whole host of things, but it's on us to figure out how do we better connect and serve those customers. Sure, I mean, data is usually very helpful to the extent that you can get it to help answer and guide your decision-making process. I think if you have access to things, you want to take both qualitative and quantitative inputs into play. I think the thing you got to be cognizant of is the time that it takes you to get that data. Speed is also an asset, and usually there's a trade-off between speed and information. And so if you're waiting until you have perfect information, somebody is going to beat you to the punch. And so I think you got to be thinking through, how much data do I really need before I can have conviction to go? And getting that right is sometimes hard. Sometimes people race ahead, and they don't have enough information, and it just bombs. and then sometimes they wait too long and they knew the right thing, but there's a startup out there that's now already 2 or 3 years ahead of them. So getting that sort of like dialed in and tuned right and getting your risk profile right is something you got to learn and get better at all the time.

Thanks, thanks so much, Nadia. Next up we have Apiksha. I believe. Hopefully I'm saying your name correctly.

I think that— I'm trying to think of the how would I break— I think that was a question that I borrowed from Kevin Hale at Woofu. I'm not sure I ever— I don't use that anymore. I don't really love that. He liked that question because it was really a good way to test empathy skills, in particular for customer support reps. Where, you know, customer support rep, a big part of the job a lot of the times is letting a customer down, but having them feel good about it, which is somewhat similar to a breakup. And so that's why he used that question. I think over the years what I've found works best is behavioral interview questions. So these are your classic, tell me about a time when you did X style of question. There is a really great spreadsheet of these questions on the US Veterans Affairs site, if you'll believe it or not. They have a huge set of questions for all levels, so you can think like entry-level jobs all the way to, you know, executive-level jobs that are good sample questions, and you can adapt these to a whole host of skill sets—critical thinking skills, collaboration skills, communication skills. So I would just encourage people to swipe those, and then you can further tune those to the job requirements you have. The reason that tell me about a time questions, behavioral interview questions, I'm a fan of is because it really bases it in fact around what that person has achieved in the past. One of the things I think new interviewers can get wrong, and I certainly did, is you walk in and ask a person, how would you approach this problem? And usually they'll give you some sort of textbook answer. Which is fine, but you don't necessarily know, could they actually do that or not? Which is where the "Tell me about a time" questions tend to be better because it bases it on things that they've seen in the past, and it's also something that you can reference check against, so you can go back and talk to their peers, their boss, whoever was also in that same situation and say, "Hey, did they go about it in this way? Yes or no?" Uh, and so those behavioral interview questions really help you get a sense. Those types of, types of questions. There you go. Yeah, it's not a super glamorous looking resource. Like you're not going to look at it and go like, oh wow, this is super trendy. But, uh, the, the content is substantive. That's for sure.

Thank you so much, Apixa. Really glad to have you here. Next up we have Emmanuel. Emmanuel, how are you? And did you have a question for Wade Foster?

Yeah, I'd check out— there's this book that the founder of DuckDuckGo wrote called Traction. It's a little old now, but it should give you a bunch of ideas. It runs through like a whole bunch of different, like traditional customer acquisition channels to experiment with. But I think the theory that you want to keep in your mind is a few things. One, who do you serve? What are your— who is your customer profile that you care about getting in front of? And two, what do they care about? Uh, and so once you can identify what they care about, you can figure out the best ways to find those folks. Uh, the nice thing about being a startup in the early days is you can go to channels that a bigger company would never spend time on because it's a waste of their money. It's too small for them. But as a small company, you can do those types of things, uh, and so that's the best place to look. So for Zapier in the early days, uh, we would go into all these forums, really small forums where people were asking for integrations and how to connect different things. And I would just participate in those forums and communities. And, you know, each time I would sort of leave a comment and link back to Zapier, we might get 3 or 4 new leads from that. So not enough to like really build a business off the back of, but when we were basically a tiny, tiny little company, 3 or 4 people was amazing. That's exactly what we needed, the right scale of folks. So, you know, I think in your shoes, I would look for those spots that can help you get access to a few customers and not worry so much about how are we going to get 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 people into this thing, at least at first. Once you start to get a few folks, then you can start to think, okay, what are the ways we could really attract these folks at a greater— in greater mass?

Thanks so much, Emmanuel. And, uh, let's move on to Randy. I think Randy's going to be our last, uh, last person here to ask a question, and then we can, uh, wrap up because I know Wade's, uh, got a bunch of other stuff going on. So, uh, appreciate his time. Uh, Randy, uh, did you have a question for Wade?

Well, first, thanks for using the product. Really appreciate the support and hopefully we can keep making things better for you. In terms of, you know, helping folks see the value in culture, especially early on, you know, I think it's like anything, like you really wanna, as a startup, like in the very early days, you're not gonna be good enough that pretty much everything. Like, you're just not nearly as good at, uh, every— any aspect of your business as you want to be. And so as a founder, I think it's always your job to figure out what is the biggest blocker for us to get to that next stage, that next step, that next clearing, and really put disproportionate emphasis on that. Um, and then everything else you kind of set aside and like take as a little bit of a put in the backlog and say, hey, we're going to get too focused on that at that point in time. So for us, like, we really only started thinking more deeply about what culture looked like not until maybe about 10 people joined the team. So that was when we got into it. Um, you know, maybe earlier would have been better in some regards. Um, uh, but at that point in time is when we felt like, okay, we're hiring at fast enough rate now that We need to have some, like, frameworks for thinking about who do we want to be— bring into this company? Who's— what's the type of person that's going to be successful at this, uh, type of venture? And so that's really where we sort of started to see, um, the spending time on people, culture, values to be a blocker for us. Um, maybe there's people who can get away with waiting longer than that. I'm sure there are folks who have done that and gotten away with it longer than that, but At a certain point, it is going to become a constraint. It's going to be a blocker. You're only as successful as your people are at a certain scale and a certain level. And so it definitely does become that. You're spot on that at some point in time, like, you're going to have to spend time on it. But beyond that, I don't know that I have any particular advice other than that just to be aware you're going to have to get good at it. Yeah, I mean, I always did this thing, and I still do this thing, where I like to go talk to founders, CEOs who are a stage ahead of me, uh, and just ask like, hey, what are the things you wish you would have done at our stage? What are the things that you over-invested in and were really glad you spent that time on? Uh, and try and learn from them. Uh, and so that has helped us, I think, be ahead of the curve on some things. Um, it's a lot easier to learn lessons from others than learn the lesson from experience. You know, learning lessons from experience sometimes mean you, you make a few mistakes along the way. So that's one thing that I've tried to do, and it's helped. And I really think it is important to go to folks who are really just only a stage or two ahead of you. I think often folks will try and shoot for like, um, a mentor who is like, you know, several stages, many stages ahead of them. But the trouble there is like, you don't always recall the specifics as well. Like, your memory, um, gets not as good, uh, as time goes on, uh, but the people who are just a stage ahead of you, you know, a year or two ahead of you, they— those battle scars are fresh, those wounds are, are very vivid in their memories, and so they're going to have a lot of relevant and practical and timely advice for you.

You bet. Appreciate it, Randy. Um, well, it looks like we're coming up on time here. Uh, Wade, this was awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Any final thoughts? Where should people follow up with you? Where can they learn more about Zapier and, you know, get involved with everything that you're doing? What would be the best place for people?

Yeah, come check the product out, zapier.com. If you're interested in working at Zapier, we're always hiring. If you just are morbidly curious about what I'm up to, I occasionally tweet @WadeFoster on Twitter. Those are usually the best places to hang out. If you just want to learn more about all this stuff, we have a very active blog, zapier.com/blog. Makerpad, also a great place to learn more about no-code and how to build stuff. So a lot of awesome resources out there to take advantage of.

Really appreciate you being here, sharing your story, and, you know, really looking forward to seeing all the success that you continue to do in the, in the space and This was awesome. I really enjoyed this. Hope everyone else did. And for those of you who haven't been to any of our rooms here on Clubhouse, the Future of Work Club, if you tap the green house at the top, you can follow the club. We have a bunch of interesting interviews and rooms coming up soon. Thanks so much, everybody. Matt, thanks so much for putting this together. And hope everyone has a great rest of your week. And please reach out if there's anything that we can help you with.

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