Why Companies Force AI: Zapier’s CEO Wade Foster Explains | Belkins Podcast Episode #21

At $100 million, you probably have the same set of problems, right? But they never disappear. So the lack of marketing budget doesn't disappear at a $10 or at $100, right?

Nope. Yeah, you're always, you know, there's always something.

What's been the most disappointing aspect of LLMs this year for you?

I think the market is still crazy bullish of what's possible with AI. Two fundamental architectural breakthroughs we've had. The Transformer that came out in 2017, and we've been able to scale that up iteratively. And then we've had, you know, reasoning models, and that's been another mechanism we've been able to scale up reasonably well. But it does feel like the incremental gains of improving those two dimensions are, are just getting more and more expensive to get, yeah, smaller and smaller returns. We need new ideas, we need new architectures, we need new ways of thinking about this. Yes, this is incredible technology, but it's not a panacea. It's not like we've invented God in a box yet.

Have you ever have a— or bottled in the imposter syndrome as the Strowbeck as a company scaled?

I mean, yes, of course, there might be skill sets that I am missing that would— a higher CEO would be better at. They, you know, maybe they're better at, you know, finance or marketing or sales or engineering. Like they have some skill set that's just better than me, unquestionably better than me. But the thing I have that no one else has is I was there at the beginning. I know the product, I know the customers, I know the culture, I know the space like the back of my hand. It's so familiar to me. The reward for solving a tough problem is more tough problems. The good news is that you have an organization that's good at handling more problems, right?

Yes.

But I've never felt like, oh, we're good. The master— the masterpiece is complete. The machine works.

We need an AI product for next week, guys.

These are the types of workflows you would want to do with AI. Like, it just felt pretty obvious, I think. Yeah, obviously we saw the story of Twitter where, you know, he laid off, what, 80% of the staff? Yeah, this is probably one of the areas where Elon is a little bit misunderstood. He will find what is truly necessary by cutting into the bone. For those of us who are not willing to make that cut, we actually never know. Like, we're never— we never know for sure, was it truly necessary? Like, the only way you will actually know is if you're willing to cut all the way into the bone. You actually have to feel the bone and go, oh yeah, it was necessary. Stuff actually started to break.

Um, has Zapier considered training or fine-tuning their own model?

Yeah, well, stay tuned.

Right.

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier, the leading automation platform that connects over 6,000 apps and powers workflows for more than 2.2 million businesses worldwide. Since launching Zapier in 2011, Wade has scaled the company from a weekend side project into a $5 billion bootstrapped giant. All without taking traditional venture capital. Under his leadership, Zapier became one of the first fully remote-first companies, growing to over 800 employees across 40+ countries while maintaining profitability and a culture admired across the tech world. Wade Foster is also a recognized thought leader on remote work, productivity, and scaling sustainable businesses. He also hosts a new podcast, Agents of Scale, about how executives are navigating the transformation risks and rewards of scaling AI across their organizations.

So I wanted to kick off just kind of really understand how does a, you know, what does a day of the life of a CEO running a $5 billion company look like in 2025 with all the craziness happening everywhere?

I review a ton of work. Like that's probably one of the biggest things, you know, product reviews, marketing reviews. Like there's just tons of just like reviewing and inspecting and making sure that I understand what's going on. It's up to standard, it's up to quality bar. Um, so that's very common. I spent a lot of time with customers trying to understand what are their problems, what are the things they're trying to solve, how is Zapier working for them or not working for them, where we can make it better. And then probably a third bucket is recruiting, always trying to find great people to come into the company to help us, you know, achieve the goals that we're trying to achieve. So those are probably like the three most common things that can kind of be bucketed down. But, you know, within those, you can be spending time on all sorts of different stuff.

Do you control your time, your calendar, or it's, you know, you don't control it and, you know, your assistant in your company literally Book it.

Uh, I, so I have a, I, I have like some guide, uh, guidelines or guardrails on how I want my calendar to look. Uh, and I work with my assistant to make sure that we're designing my day, my week, etc., to give me, to, to hit those goals. Um, and you know what that looks like is, you know, my assistant has access to, to, to everything. Uh, and so we'll sit down at you know, the beginning of the quarter, the beginning of the week, like at the beginning of the quarter, I'm like, these are the big projects I need to get done. Like these are the 2 or 3 most important things for the business. And so, you know, with her, I'm setting up that canvas to say I need enough space daily, weekly, monthly to chip away at these mega problems. Then on a week-to-week basis, we're reviewing all the inbound stuff that's coming in and saying yes to some things, saying no to some things, pushing some things out. And then all with that backdrop of making sure that there still is these big blocks of time. And I find it really helpful to do that with a thought partner because my— I know my personal default working style is I like to say yes to everything. I'm curious about everything. And so I'm just like, go, go, go, go, go. But if I left to my own devices, I'll not leave enough room for that, like, focus time to go solve those bigger issues. And those things will will linger. And so, yeah, I work with her to make sure that there's a lot of space to go do those things.

Um, with, with your schedule, um, can you manage work like 8, 9 hours, or it takes more time of your day?

It's— I can't— I, I'm always thinking about work. Like, even when I'm not at work, it's running through my head whether I like it to, like it to be or not. Um, you know, I do have my schedule set up to where I— it's pretty regimented. And so I'm, you know, I'm usually starting at 8 in the morning. I'm usually logging off to go hang out with the family around 5:30. And then, you know, once the girls are down to bed, I'm usually back at it for another hour or two, you know, pretty consistently every single day. Like, I think, you know, when you— when especially when I started, when I had kids, you just find that the routine is super valuable. And so we kind of just stick to that pretty much pretty consistently.

Yeah. Any— there any sacrifices that you're making right now just to fit in that in that schedule?

I don't view it as like sacrifices. You know, I think I have a set of priorities, which is my family and Zapier, and like those are the two things that I care most about and I want to contribute as much time to it as possible. And so that's where I spend my time. You know, I think other people might look at it and say, well, you're— you're not doing this, you're not doing that, you're not going to experience this in your life, etc. And they might look at that as sacrifices. I'm looking as like, no, I'm doing the things I want to do most. And sure, those other things might be fun to somebody else, but for me, these are the places I really enjoy spending my time. So I don't know that like, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice, I guess, from my perspective.

You mentioned that you spend a lot of time of your working time interviewing customer, like working with customers and interviewing kind of new people, new hires. Do you kind of have a specific level of hires you interview? So VP level, director level up, Or you're trying to get like, what's your, I know, besides of your organization, you have a specific role, you are like all the product or how does it work for you guys?

I interview everybody at the director level and above and then I am available to talk to anyone else. You know, I tell every hiring manager in the company, if you need help closing the intern, I'm there. Like, yeah, I'll get on a 10-minute call, 15-minute call and you know, talk 'em through why we think they're a great fit for the company, talk 'em through the opportunity, answer questions, tell 'em why they might not be a great fit. Like, you know, hey, if you want X, you know, A, B, and C, but Zapier's X, Y, and Z, like you shouldn't say yes to us because you're not gonna find it's a good time here. And so I make myself available for everyone who's interested in joining.

Can you give me an example of the last meeting you declined that, or you didn't want to attend? Some of the company-wide meetings, not the external.

Yeah, I mean, there was a particular technical decision that the team was working on that had gotten bubbled up to me and I'd done my pre-review on it and it was like, hey, yeah, I think this is an important thing to happen. Like we need to do this. How we go do it, I don't have a particularly strong point of view on it. So you all have the discussion. It's clear there was multiple different paths that people thought were valuable. And so I said, hey, I'm gonna bow out on this one. If you find yourself in a situation where you just need a tiebreaker, then I'm happy to like come back in and help break a tie. But otherwise, like, yeah, I don't, I don't, I didn't have anything particularly novel to add.

Yeah.

Uh, and I think that's, that's part of the fun too, as the company has grown, is that there's problems that just can be solved by other people that are like, hey, like you're, you're gonna have a better perspective on this, go, go tackle it. Um, and it frees, frees me up to go work on other areas.

Yeah, I bet you haven't been as good as you are right now, you know, when you started or as you are. At what point in time in your kind of career ladder, it kind of clicked in the time of the business growth, it clicked for you and you became better with like all of this?

Well, I feel like I'm always getting better. Like I don't, I'm not sure I've ever, I'm not sure I've gotten to that point where I'm like, oh, it's clicked. I know I'm great at this job. Like that hasn't happened yet. Um, but I definitely can feel, yeah, I can definitely look back and see spots where I'm like, oh, I think I would have handled that differently or better now with the skill sets that I have. Um, you know, if I look at the, the specific pivot points of improvement, I'd say they happened in a couple areas. One, it's, you know, that first, first layer of management you add in there's like a whole set of learnings around that. Then there's when you're adding a second layer of management, there's a whole set of learnings around that, right? That second layer of management, you're also hiring your first exec team. And so when you're bringing in your first exec team, like you're learning how to hire and work with a level of senior person that maybe you're not used to before. And so there's a whole set of learnings around that. Then, you know, your next pivot point is you realize, okay, you probably made some mistakes. And now you gotta course correct some of those mistakes and you're trying to figure out like, well, did I, did I make a mistake or is this just how it's supposed to be? Like, you know, you just don't know what you don't know. And so, you know, it probably takes too long, or at least in my case it took too long to sort of course correct some of those mistakes 'cause you're not sure, is it a mistake or is this just how it's supposed to be? And I'm, I'm the idiot at the table. And yeah, I think once, like the best unlock for me was building— like it took a lot of self-reflection. Like I worked with a coach for years, you know, I've done a lot of 360 feedback, I've gotten a lot of feedback. And so, you know, at this point in time, like I kind of know what I'm good at as a CEO. I know what I'm not so good at. And there's sort of like a point where you realize I'm going to play to my strengths. These are the things I think make me uniquely qualified and special to do the job I'm in. And then there are some weaknesses I've got that are holding the company back, and I'm not going to try and solve those weaknesses, but rather what I'm going to try and do is actually assemble a team that kind of has my, my backside on these areas where I'm not as good and know that and, and, and be self-aware enough to know those and communicate those to everyone so that everyone kind of knows the role on the team that they're playing. You know, you could think about it like a you know, I don't know, like a, like a soccer team where it's like, hey, I'm good at this position. You're here to play this position. And so I need you to play this position. And that first version I was like, I didn't even know what the positions were. You're just sort of like, well, I need somebody who's in engineering and I need someone who's in finance. I mean, somebody who's in marketing. But there's other roles besides just the functions on the team. It's like, who's going to, who's going to push boldness? Who's going to do risk management? Who's going to, drive on. So, there's like these more behavioral or like adaptive things that you have to figure out. And it's not just the, it's not just the skill that they're bringing to the, their discipline they're bringing to the table, but it's like, how does the team dynamic work? And it's obvious to say that, but like, it takes so much to like really learn what that means in practice.

Yeah, I imagine. Do you often wear a firefighter hat still to this day?

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole host of things that get escalated to me or just sort of drop into the CEO's hat. And it's not because I'm like the best person in the company to solve that problem or particularly, you know, well-suited to even solve that problem. It's just that the way you design an org, the org is set up to catch certain things and it's really good at catching the things that matter a lot. But then there's a bunch of things that don't fit cleanly into those systems that you've set up. And those things kind of just slide through the organization and they, you know, they slide to the bottom and the bottom is me. And so you just kind of catch a bunch of stuff and then you're like, oh, what do I do with this stuff? Do I need to do something about it? Some of it's very important. Like some of it's, you know, there was a customer support issue and we just dropped the ball on it and it's like, oh, we got to go figure out how to make it right. So you got things like that where you're like, I have to go play the backstop, the goalie for those things. And then you got other opportunities where it's just, here's an opportunity that Zapier could pursue. Maybe it's interesting, maybe it's not. Nobody in the company sort of knew what to do with it. And so there's sort of this jump ball situation and you're, you kind of have to take a look at it and go like, well, what do I wanna do with that? Do I wanna go say yes to that thing or try and get the company to say yes to this thing? Or do I just keep the company focused on what I think is, uh, matters today? So you sort of have a whole wide variety of opportunities and problems that kind of flood into your world, and then you're trying to push them back out into the company to go execute on the things that matter.

Do you notice there are less of those, you know, fires to put out as the company grew, or more, or is the same amount, like, or just even the amount that you can handle, you can solve just from your kind of, you know, passing through perspective, you know?

The reward for solving a tough problem is more tough problems. And so as you grow and you get better at solving tough problems for your customers and more customers, your reward for that is you get more customers and you have more problems and they're harder problems and they're tougher problems. Now, the good news is that you have an organization that's good at handling more problems, right?

Yes.

But you still have more problems. Like they just grow and grow and grow.

Exponentially.

In scope. Yeah. And so it's not that it's I've never felt like, oh, you know, the masterpiece is complete. The machine works like exactly as it was designed. You know, you're constantly like tending to the garden, so to speak.

So I imagine that if I'm at a, you know, $10 to $20 million, then, you know, I never have budgets for marketing. I need to hire better people. There's not, you know, some people are turning over, you know, some customers are not happy. At $100 million, you probably have the same set of problems, right? And just more of that the same, but they never disappear. So the lack of marketing budget doesn't disappear at a $10 or at $100, right?

Nope. Yeah, you're always, there's always something, you know, I've never, the joke I have around like headcount internally is you'll often, I've never gone to, I've never had a hiring manager come to me and say, or an individual inside the company say, you know, I would be less stressed if you let me hire somebody else. Like everyone sort of just is sort of universally agrees, ah, if I had just one more person, I'd be less stressed. And that doesn't mean you should get one more person. Like you gotta find a way to just solve the problems that are in front of you with the constraints you're facing every day. Yeah. That's what makes it fun. That's what makes it challenging.

Have you ever have a, or bottled into imposter syndrome as the company scaled, like wondering if someone else could run Zapier better than you are running it?

I mean, yes, of course. I think we all have imposter syndrome. I mean, maybe some of us don't, like, I don't know. Does Elon Musk have imposter syndrome? Like he seems like, you know, utmost confident in his abilities, but I, you know, most of my peer group that I talk to, I think we all sort of are unsure that like, hey, are we the best to go about it? And, you know, like the, the way I've sort of come to grips with this is, you know, as we've hired more and more executives, I've watched some of them thrive and be incredible at the company, but I've also watched some really struggle and ultimately fail. And when you look at their career arcs pre-Zapier and post-Zapier, you often see folks that were successful in other areas. And so when you look at that, you have to be reflective to say, well, what was it that these individuals could seemingly be successful in, in areas before us and after us and not be successful here? Now, some of that could be, of course, hey, there was something about their skill set that didn't apply to Zapier, but there's also something about our company that makes it challenging to work here. And so when I, as I've watched that, like, one of the things I've thought through is, or that I've noticed, is that there's this trend of folks who, you know, that, that often wind up in like leadership roles at companies where they're quite successful. They, they have long trajectories, but they've been there from very early on and they've had a chance to grow up and succeed with it. And so those, those individuals are often uniquely suited to lead that company, that area of the business, etc.

Right.

And then when they move to another company and they jump in at the top when the thing is already going, that's a really challenging situation. And so I've looked at that phenomenon, I've looked back at myself and I said, hmm, that's interesting. And you start to go, well, Who is the person out there that would hire me as a CEO? And if they were to hire me as a CEO, how would I go do that job?

Mm-hmm.

And when I start to think about it, I go, hmm, that's interesting. I think it would be really difficult to be a hired CEO because I don't know all the context. I don't know all the history. I don't know the product. I don't know the customers. I don't know the culture. There's all these things that I don't know that I have to go figure out on the fly. And so when I think of it from that perspective, I start to go, oh, that's interesting. There might be skill sets that I am missing that would— a higher CEO would be better at. They, you know, maybe they're better at, you know, finance or marketing or sales or engineering. Like they have some skill set that's just better than me, unquestionably better than me. But the thing I have that no one else has is I was there at the beginning. I know the product, I know the customers, I know the culture, I know the space like the back of my hand. It's so familiar to me. And so that's when I, when I think, when I start to have those moments of imposter syndrome, when I'm like, ah, maybe somebody could do better than I, I remember I'm like, like, okay, that's true, they might be better at XYZ thing, but I have these things that are very rare too. Uh, and so you just kind of have to like find those ways to like, yeah, just see the bigger picture, put it into context, and then, you know, again, play to those strengths. Those are strengths that I have that no one else can bring to the table. And then there's these weaknesses that I'm like, okay, how do I build an executive team, a culture, an organization that can compensate for the places where I am insufficient as a CEO and as a leader.

Yeah. You know, I think you are in this kind of very unique and beneficial for yourself position, you know, running the business for 15 years and being on the ground with your boots every day working with the customer. So now like, you know, thinking about that, you know, other peers in your position who raised hundreds of millions of dollars or went IPO and now their entire day is either talking to investors or with the kind of doing the whatever other things that you've never done, right? But then they are not going to be doing the, you know, maybe the customer interviews or, you know, the product or, you know, the tickets or the other things, right? Because they probably have been brought on to do something else, right? More, which are, you know, different from, you know, maybe your day-to-day, right? You mentioned being uncertain. Have you been uncertain about AI or you've been always excited about it?

You know, I, I think we started to get pretty interested in this, like, generative AI, the LLMs, this version, like a few months before ChatGPT had launched. My two co-founders had started dabbling and playing around with it. And so pretty early on, we got excited about what the possibilities were here. And, you know, product launch after product launch, capability improvement after capability improvement, that excitement just continues to grow and grow and grow. That is mixed with uncertainty, though, because you're— as the technology improves, as these capabilities emerge, you're always wondering, are we going to figure out how to use it for our customers? Are we going to solve the problems faster, better, etc. than the next guy? And that's where that uncertainty starts to seep in, where you're like, hmm, we, we got to figure this stuff out now. Like there's a sense of urgency, there's a sense of motivation to get to, to go be the company that like, you know, our customers want us to be like, they've committed to Zapier, they love this product, they want to see it evolve and grow and do these things. I want to make sure that we are the ones that put those advancements in their hand and they don't feel like they have to go do big migrations and move somewhere else just because we were, you know, asleep at the wheel. And so there certainly is like the uncertainty about what happens next, but it's always been paired with, yeah, I think the excitement has always sort of outpaced the uncertainty where it's like, ah, what is possible here? And if we go solve interesting problems, we're going to be fine.

What's the kind of the ratio between the excitement and the pressure for the market and the pressure from just trying to innovate or incorporate that AI into the tech suite?

Yeah, obviously like there's a big echo chamber where You know, if you hang out on X or LinkedIn or, you know, just pay any attention to this stuff, like you hear the exuberance and excitement about what is possible with AI. You know, in terms of like the pressure, I don't know, for us the pressure has always been internal. Like I've never felt like there was somebody out there that could put more pressure on me than I was already putting on myself. And so I think that's kind of just helped manage the pressure a little bit because it's like, you're not, you're not telling me anything that I haven't already thought of or like felt on my own. And so we're always pushing for what we think is best for the long haul. Now, we might draw different conclusions, you know, like we are— I think we're often looked upon differently because we haven't fundraised, because we've done things differently. And in my mind, that's all because we've been playing a long game here. Like we're trying to play this iterative game that is decades plus long. And you know, I think sometimes that makes us look a little odd to external observers. They're like, what do I make of Zapier? What are they doing over there?

Yeah. What's been the most disappointing aspect of LLMs this year for you? Or has it all been all upside? So far?

Um, well, you know, I think, you know, it definitely feels like, I don't know, for folks probably listen to the, uh, Andrej Karpathy interview with DoorDash that came out last week. Um, and you know, I think he like does a, it's a really good sort of state of the union in terms of like where we're at with LLMs this year. And I think effectively what we've seen is that we've had two fundamental architectural breakthroughs. We've had the transformer that came out in 2017 and we've been able to scale that up iteratively. And then we've had reasoning models and that's been another mechanism we've been able to scale up reasonably well. But it does feel like the incremental gains of improving those two dimensions are, are just getting more and more expensive to get, yeah, smaller and smaller returns. And so I think if there's a place where there's disappointment, it's like, okay, we, we need, we need new ideas, we need new architectures, we need new ways of thinking about this if we're going to get that next step function improvement. Uh, now that said, reasoning models, Transformers, like there's a whole bunch of economically useful stuff we can do with this technology today. And you know, I think that's where we're spending a lot of time is how do we just put more guardrails on these tools, like make it easier for customers to adapt to them and use them. Um, because You can do impressive things if they're sort of harnessed well. And I think it requires more effort to harness them well than, yeah, the mainstream media would sort of have you think at this point in time.

I kind of caught myself thinking that often B2B companies in our space, B2B tech companies in our space, they kind of jumped on AI as a certain, like a shortcut to growth in a way, something, you know, like kind of fresh and new, kind of, oh, we can grow our market or our share, our user base. And it's kind of maybe intuitive because it's, you can play with it, you can kind of, you know, just kind of trying to ride a wave in a way. But when you really look at what the AI as the part of the functionality of that product really does, it's a very kind of empty box in a way, if you know what I mean, or sort of like not as beneficial in a way. So now with the progress or with even ChatGPT slowing down. So now kind of with the ChatGPT-5, no one as excited as they were before, right? Everyone is like, oh, it's slower, it's stupider, it's other thing, yada yada. So everyone's like more careful about the technology. I feel like now all these companies, they were like, hold on. So, okay, now we release the AI, now it works, but the market is not as excited about what do we do next? Like what's the playbook? We still need to continue the growth, but it's not there. Is there something that in this thought process that is correct or I'm way off and you disagree?

I mean, I'm still, I think the market is still crazy bullish of what's possible with AI. Yeah, I think you see the amount of investment going into these areas and that just doesn't happen if people are not excited about the potential for the future here. And so, You know, I do think what we're feeling is the practical realities that, you know, this is— yes, this is incredible technology, but it's not panacea. It's not like we've invented God in a box yet. Like, there's still a lot of work to be done to harness the tools and make it useful. Uh, and so, you know, we're just kind of in that long slog period where there's got to be a lot of incremental effort alongside hopefully a handful of big step function improvements that really allow builders to go make some just incredible innovations for customers.

I've spoken with Goddard from G2 and he said that, you know, a lot of companies are pushing their AI products because there's a new AI category. So you need to, you know, place your product in that AI category to win the market. If you don't do that, then you're just gonna miss on the opportunities on that category. So everyone is just literally racing to just deploying and taking that AI part of the category. Have you had a similar conversation? Had you had similar playbook and kind of similar way of doing this? Like we need to get into that AI category as soon as we can.

Well, I think for us it was, you know, there are definitely companies that are sort of doing AI for AI's sake where it's like, oh, we need an AI, everybody's getting an AI story, we need an AI story. I think for us it was just a lot more obvious like how AI would be used in our product. It's like we've got this incredible workflow automation tool. AI is like the next obvious step for how you make automation better for people. You can put AI inside of workflows. You know, we weren't in the situation where it was like, oh, we gotta bolt this odd thing on in a weird, you know, some contorted way. It was just very clear that like, oh, this product category benefits a lot from, and there's some very natural ways to push it into the product surface area. Let's go do that.

Right. So you didn't have a meeting where you came in and it's like, we need an AI product for next week, guys. Let's brainstorm.

Yeah, it wasn't like, hmm, how will we go do this? Like, it just kind of was like, well, these are the types of workflows you would wanna do with AI. Like, it just felt pretty obvious, I think.

Has Zapier considered training or fine-tuning their own model? You guys are building your own?

You know, we've thought about it here and there and ultimately like decided not to, especially since the like the Frontier Labs are just doing such a great job of, you know, pushing on these areas. Like we've always felt like we could build on top of those capabilities better than it would be to build our own model. I don't know if that's always gonna be the case, but to date, that's how we made the decision.

Have you made calculations how much would it cost to build your own model with the amount of data you guys have or? Is it like very expensive or it's affordable kind of at your scale?

You know, it kind of just depends on the type of model you're trying to go build out at the end of the day.

Yeah, it's just like we were very, like me and co-founder, when I was preparing for the interview, we discussed like, you know, what we can talk about with you today. And he's like, man, with the amount of data Zapier collects, like just from all the actions and from kind of customers you guys could build a pretty damn good model, we felt, but it could be expensive and difficult, right, to do that. So we just kind of, right.

Yeah. Well, stay tuned.

Right. We're not gonna tell anyone. So no one's gonna see this conversation. It's just between two of us. I have kind of candles here. Just there's no cameras. We're not recording this. Um, do you ever worry about, um, agentic AI, uh, taking over Zapier's, uh, kind of place or use case?

I think you always have to be paranoid that, uh, there's something out there, some technology shaft, or, you know, some smart entrepreneur who has a better idea, a better approach, um, to, to building this. It's kind of the classic innovator's dilemma type stuff. And so, Yeah, we've always been paying attention to, to technology shifts and new approaches to building automation and workflows. I think with LLMs, AI, it's no different. Like we're just as we're paying just as much attention to like how might this disrupt Zapier and but as much energy we put into that, like we're trying to put disproportionate amount into how do we use it to make the product better because ultimately that's what serves customers is like, how do we actually make the product experience better with the technology? And if we do that ourselves, then we'll, we'll be just fine. Like if we're thinking about that versus sort of looking over our shoulders, trying to figure out who's going to, who's doing it different, better, etc., it's like just pay attention to what customers need and how can we use the technology to deliver on those desires.

So in other words, playing more reactive game, just seeing where the market is and just trying to then kind of provide them what they're looking for instead of trying to figure out like, all right, we're going to do this big thing that everyone would need and that's going to substitute this other thing. That's right. Yeah.

I mean, you, you know, you got to pay attention. There's some things that do require like more substantive investment. And so you do have to make bets on certain things like that. That said, you know, yeah, I think you're you're ultimately, when you're sitting down and thinking about your product roadmap for the next 6 months, you're mostly looking at a combination of like, what are the problems that our customers are facing, right? What is the technology capable of that's available to us today? And that part of the equation is more interesting than ever because the technology is advancing faster. And so you usually can come back to old problems and say, we have a better way to solve this every 6 months. And then trying to figure out, okay, what could we do to deliver on solving that problem for our customers? And then next, well, as fast as we can. Like, you know, used to, we used to think about it like every 6 months or so, but nowadays like it's a lot easier and a lot faster to ship some of this stuff. And so you're often able to deliver even quicker.

One last question on the AI topic and then I'll gotta move on. Don't want to bore you. Who, what inspired you to start an Agents of Scale podcast? You know, your podcast about AI transformation. Yeah.

You know, I think we had been spending a lot of time talking to our customers, particularly our enterprise customers, and seeing, you know, the things that were working for them, seeing the things that they were struggling with. And, you know, felt like a lot of the mainstream discourse was not actually doing a great job of surfacing use cases, talking about the boots on the ground problems, solutions that these organizations were facing. And, you know, it felt like we were just sitting in an interesting spot to help sort of bubble up more of these stories, to help people have a much more grounded understanding of what's working today, what's not working today from real business leaders and practitioners trying to tackle this stuff. So that, that's kind of what we were trying to just sort of add to the, uh, the, the discourse. Um, you know, I think oftentimes the discourse is more around the drama, cert, you know, around these things. And it's, it's like, it, I mean, this stuff will be a movie someday. It's so great. Like it, you know, you've got massive funding rounds, huge personalities, like crazy technology innovations. Like all that stuff is the thing you like, you hear so much about that. And we were just like, well, let's just talk about like, here's how an insurance company can do a better job. And like, we just wanted more of that, like very practical, because that, that's what most of us are trying to figure out. Um, the drama's great and it's fun to watch, but most of us are just like, okay, like how, how can I use this stuff? Yeah.

At the end of the day, everyone then when think about the AI, they think about the ChatGPTs of the world and say like, oh, I'll just use the ChatGPT for that. But there are some other use cases that you can deploy AI in a much more effective fashion, right? If you do that, it's just need to surface those. And this is the first kind of full-on show that you're hosting, right?

Yeah, I've never hosted a podcast before, so I'm learning.

How many episodes you guys did already? About 20, 30?

I think we're maybe around like a dozen or so released. I don't know, something like that.

Yeah, I saw you guys are doing like weekly or biweekly or something like you're trying to pump them out very quickly.

Yeah, like once a week, yeah.

So how are you feeling in the role of the host?

Well, I'm still learning. I mean, how many have you, how many interviews have you done so far?

So I think I've done around 100, but I am, it's my creative project, so I do whatever the fuck I want. So it means that I post trying to regularly, but if I'm busy, I'm not getting the people I like, just doing creative work with like, you know, putting so much money in the production, which is fine because like, I just like it to be nice and creative, you know, and then so on and so forth. So just kind of So I'm enjoying it. So I'm doing this for like 4 years, but then I'm trying to put maybe 20, 30 episodes, you know, 20 episodes a year max. Like I'm not changing the numbers.

Do you feel like you got better at interviewing at some point in time?

I think it depends on the guest. I think it's more like it's a tango thing, right? So you just kind of, if you hit it off and you just have a vibe and you spend enough, I think like, again, just step back. It's about finding the format. I don't like the short ones when you do like 30-45 minutes. It just put me on the edge. And when I'm just, you know, getting into it and we have a lot of time, it's just a better conversation. And I feel like I've learned more to play my tune and get the guest more relaxed to my tempo in a way, you know. But yeah, but yeah, it just depends on the guest. For you, are you more comfortable right now after a dozen of the conversations?

I'm getting more comfortable. Uh, it, it's not, um, it's a skill. Like, interviewing is clearly a skill. Like, I have a ton of respect. Like, I— you sort of always— it's kind of how it's, it's sort of, it's like this with a lot of things where, like, you, you can appreciate something from a distance, and then you start to go try and do that thing, and your appreciation grows where you're like, okay, there's a— there is clearly a skill here that I'm I'm capable of being an interviewer, but the degree of difficulty is maybe different than I thought it was. So yeah, that's where I'm still like trying to figure out like, what's my style, what's my hook, you know, how do I get guests engaged? Like which, which guests are great guests, which ones are fine, but, you know, create more work for me. So yeah, all that stuff, like I'm learning as we go. Yeah, that's great.

Well, listen, I'm very excited for you. It's a, you know, in a way of like when you are just focusing on strategic goals, like every year, those milestones are not as exciting as having this kind of creative smaller projects that you can drive yourself and just see the impact of it. And it's fun. So, you know.

Yeah, I do think that part of it is nice. Like, you know, as the company gets bigger and bigger, like there's other people that own a project. And you know, this is one where it's like, oh hey, like I can look at like, I got this cool guest, we had this cool discussion and like here's how many downloads it got. Here's like the feedback. And it feels much more intimate than sometimes, you know, the machinery of the, the larger entity shipping and stuff, which also is fun, but just fun in a different way.

In a different way. Yeah. Are you thinking about doing newsletter as well? Substack?

I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, I, I think the, producer I have working on it, she's been, yeah, you know, collecting like follow-ups and things like that where I think she wants to turn it into a newsletter that sort of is like a behind the scenes bit behind it. So we might give it a try.

But it kind of makes sense even in terms of just writing down the use cases that you're discussing, right? Because, you know, like for me personally, I'm more into writing and sort of like reading the writing text. So, you know, even like following up on the podcast and you explain the, and put some graphics into the use case or, you know, the example, I think like the game plan is repackaging. I think we are not doing a lot of that repackaging, just need to repackage more. So if you already have already one, isn't just moving another?

Yep, 100%.

Folks, if you're enjoying the interview so far, I would appreciate if you spend a second, like, comment, or subscribe to Belkin's Podcast on the platform where you're watching this. I'm trying to get my show listed in the best podcasts and a couple of seconds of your time would really help me a lot to do that. Thank you so much and let's get back to the interview. Unusual question, or maybe did anyone ask you this already or not, but if you sold Zapier tomorrow, would that make you a billionaire?

I guess it depends on how much it sold for. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, let's assume yes, I think like based on your valuation.

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't done the math recently, so yeah.

But have you, have you, um, have you, do you have an inspiration to move to the billionaire status or no?

No, no.

It's too much or it's just too much pressure or just you don't need it?

You know, I think, wait, I guess it just depends on like how you live your life. I, I have a pretty modest life. You know, we own our house, we live in a nice neighborhood. I can afford food at the grocery store. My girls have clothes on their backs. What else do I need? You know, like, I'm happy with the wealth I have. You know, you add a zero to it. Like, I don't know that that changes much for me. So for me, the motivation, the energy comes from solving these problems for customers, for wanting to do something impactful. And, you know, if we do that successfully, yeah, I'm sure my wealth will grow, but that's not why I do it.

Do you have all the toys and the resources you need to kind of be excited about solving those problems that, you know, having a billion dollars won't kind of add anything additional? You know, I think like obviously, you know, for Elon or Sam or anyone else, probably like billions are more like the resources and toys they have to kind of, you know, obviously, you know, Elon, won't be able to buy Twitter if you couldn't be, wouldn't be a billionaire or put money there and be just excited about the other spaces. Like I was just wondering, are you more like focused and excited about kind of Zapier or there are some other venues that you're excited about and you just don't want to work on, but then maybe later you would, you know, focusing on and that's why you would need that kind of billion dollars to spend.

Yeah, I guess, I guess I just look at that differently. Like to me, you know, that's like the company's balance sheet and like how are we balancing our own balance sheet to be able to sort of go advance Appier's mission, to go achieve the things we want to do, et cetera. And I think of that less as like, okay, how do we like, you know, build Wade's balance sheet so he can go, you know, have some other fun project on the side. Like, yeah, I don't know. Like I, You look at Elon and I mean, how many companies is he running right now? Like 3, 4, 5? Like, yeah, it's like one is enough for me. Like I'm, I'm plenty occupied with one.

Any other space that are different from where you are at that excites you that you might try one day?

You know, before Zapier, I, I worked in like climate tech and so, you know, energy, climate, like things like that. I think there's a whole bunch of problems there right now that are endlessly fascinating. And I think they're even getting more exciting because AI is creating much more demand for energy. Right. And so that is opening up different types of investments that may have— well, like just kind of were on the, on the shelves, like, you know, at least in the United States, like nuclear was kind of you know, a sideshow for a while and now it's actually like kind of back on the table and it's, I don't know, it's just, it's, it's interesting to see, you know, energy and clean energy like playing a much bigger role these days.

Yeah, I think it's gonna be one of the biggest, uh, fast growing industries soon, right? With kind of AI and with chips. Uh, my co-founder, he's very excited about energy, by the way. He's always say like, hey, if, you know, if I, when I exit, I'm gonna put my money in the energy. For me, it's more farming and food. You know, I kind of, I have problems with food. Like, you know, that's one of the reasons I live in Europe and I didn't like the food in the US and just generally, you know, yeah, so I just kind of feel like we need to feed more mouths, right? And just get better at, even better at food production or the quality of the production. 'Cause like what you're putting in your mouth, right? But for me, it maybe probably be like a farm, you know, like a rancho type of thing. Just—

there you go.

Yeah. I don't know whether it's the right approach for a person in tech, just thinking about the ranch show. Maybe I'm not doing something wrong with my life, you know?

My grandpa was a farmer. Well, I say farmer, gardener is probably a better approach. And so, you know, he, but, you know, when I was growing up, I'd go out to his garden and work with him. There's like a, I can see the appeal. You know, there's a, there's sort of a good routine and a pleasantness and like a reward for your hard work that like, you know, it scratches a particular itch.

Yeah. You know, so for me, like I've spent the last 10 years working digital. So you're in front of your laptop, you know, you can kind of build an application, you can promote the application, you can raise capital, you can do literally entire life in a laptop, but there's not as much feeling as you natured something with your hands and you like play in the dirt.

Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. I was outside with my girls the other day and we, uh, we brought in a, a big old bucket of like peppers and tomatoes and, uh, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff. And like, it's like holding in your hand, it's like, I made this. It's not really like, you know, the rain and the sun, like the, the, the earth made this, but like, hey, I, you know, it happened in my, it happened in my garden.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So exciting. Um, so on a, on a kind of on a, on a different topic, um, is there any, do you have any kind of ritual or habit or routine that kind of that you consistently give yourself as a sort of like a biggest return for you to kind of stay on or stay focused or just be in the zone?

Yeah, as Zapier, as I've worked on Zapier longer and longer, I do have sort of like a health and fitness routine that has been really important. Like one, it's a good night's sleep. I'm pretty much a 7, 8 hours a night guy. And so like, I'm pretty, pretty regimented about that. And the first thing in the morning, I'm usually getting a, you know, 30 to 60 minute workout in. Just got to get that sweat going. And I think, you know, like being able to do those things too well, like doing those things well just helps with stress management. It helps with— I just feel good after it. Like it's just— yeah, I found that it's one of those things that my body needs, my brain needs to operate at my best.

You know, like, sport is important for longevity as well, right? Like, if you wanted to live on until 100, 150 plus.

We'll see about that. I don't know if 100— like, 100 sounds great. 150? I mean, that's— we're gonna need some advances in science to get to that. Yeah, maybe, maybe we'll see.

You're not into kind of longevity thing and just thinking about how you would, you know, be immortal type of thing?

I don't know about immortal, but like, I want to be— I want to be healthy. Like, I watched my granddad lived to 98 and he walked 3 miles a day, uh, up until his very end. And I look at what he was able to do and I think he had 98 healthy years. And then you look at other people who Yeah, you know, they might live to 98, but the last decade was pretty rough. Yeah. And so to me, I'm like, I want to make sure that the life I've got is a healthy life.

I recently picked up tennis just to— because I know that you can play to a very old age. I know folks in their 70s and 80s are just, you know, putting the ball in. And I was like, all right, well, you know, I'm probably not going to be as excited about the gym or fitness when I'm at 70. Because you're just doing that alone, right? But in tennis, when you are playing with your peer, you know, grand people, whatever, it could be fun, right?

Yeah, I think that's why pickleball has taken off so much. Yeah, it's such a good sport for, you know, up into your 80s. It's, you know, doesn't hurt your joints. It's a good social outing. I think it's why it's grown so much.

Are you playing as well? You're playing?

I played a ton of racquetball before I had kids in the pandemic, and so I'd gotten really good, and a lot of my racquetball friends moved to pickleball during the pandemic because it was outside. And so, uh, you know, I played a little, but, uh, I haven't— I don't have a routine going on since my girls were born. Like, that's— yeah, kind of like that, that like sport element shifted to, to family for me from a priority point of view.

But then soon they would be able to play with you, right? So you can go and—

we're getting there. Yeah, I mean, last night after dinner we went outside and we kicked the soccer ball around. So my oldest is like, I want to be goalie. And so like, you know, we're starting to have some fun with that.

That's cool. How many people are at Zapier now?

750, I think.

750. And what are the biggest departments in terms of the headcount?

Engineering, product and engineering is like half the company. Sales, success, support, like org is probably the other larger org function.

If you had to rebuild Zapier from scratch today, could you do it with 100 people?

You know, it's hard to say. Um, one of the biggest things that Zapier benefited from was the timing in which we launched meant that we built out a developer platform, and that developer platform attracted a lot of folks building our integrations. Now, if you had to build Zapier today, you're also competing with Zapier, and those folks have already built Zapier integrations, so they're not motivated to go build an integration for you. And so you're gonna have to go figure out how to build out that long tail of integrations effectively. Now, the flip side, it's easier to build 'em now. All the AI coding tools, it's not fully automated yet, but it is a lot easier. So, you know, do those two things cancel out? I'm not quite sure. So I definitely think we could be more efficient. We were already very efficient, but I think we could be even more efficient. Would it be less than 100? I don't know.

Do you know Pavel Durov from Telegram?

You know, no, I know of him. Yeah, I know of him. Yeah.

You don't think he has a team of like 40 people or something like that? Like, it's incredible. Right, to like 40 engineers and they had like billion users. I was always kind of impressed with like how do you kind of build such a big product with like a very lean team. And I was just wondering, like you were one of the people that have a huge engineering team and lots of users, right? Do you imagine a world where, or in some future when the AI agents will be a little bit more advanced where someone like you with experience that you've got with Zapier would be able to build a complex product like Zapier just with a much smaller team with everything that you know right now?

I think you can build the product. The question is, can you get distribution and sell and that part of it as well? And yeah, I think the, where I think this theory falls down is that if you are able to generate a big, like, healthy margin, then somebody else is going to look at that margin. This is the classic Jeff Bezos quote, you know, your margin is my opportunity. They're going to see that margin and say, well, what if I invested a little bit more? I will tolerate a narrower margin to take your market share. And so I think you kind of start to bump up against capitalism where capitalism is going to compete to be able to deliver a better product to customers and take profits out of the system and hand those back to customers at the end of the day. And so if you're just sitting there on your like lump of cash and not actually innovating, not figuring out ways to help your customers, at the end of the day, someone else is going to go figure that out. And they're gonna deploy dollars to do that. And the dollars might go to AI compute, it's gonna go to humans, it's gonna go to whatever way in which the smart entrepreneur can deploy that capital with a positive return.

Where is the sort of like the interdependency between the scale and efficiency, if you know what I mean? So it's like, are you measuring it like in terms of the bigger we get, how much more inefficient we become with our decision-making, with shipping things with other, and opposed to kind of running a leaner, faster, maybe just more innovative teamwork or—

Smaller teams do tend to ship faster. They do tend to ship higher quality work. So to that end, you probably want to keep your team small. That said, your organization might benefit by having lots of small teams that can, you know, have some sort of like guiding principle or some sort of guiding North Star that they can loosely collectively work towards. Together, um, and you'll achieve something bigger than the sum of its parts if you do that well. Um, it's a constant juggling act. Like, you feel the tension. Like, you can feel in the company as you add people, there's times when the efficiency drops. But you also can feel areas where when you're not adding capacity you're holding the company back. And so you're trying to figure out like that formula where, you know, each new person you add gets more efficient than the one before it. And it's not always obvious like what's causing that. When you look at an engineering surface area, you might realize like, oh, you know, there's, there's technical debt and there's other areas that means that the next incremental engineer is going to be less efficient than the one before it. And so you might realize, oh, okay, like we gotta go make some foundational investments to make it such that the next incremental one can be more efficient than the one before it. I think this is true in sales and support as well too. And so you're constantly trying to like understand that equation. I don't know that we've nailed this at Tapper. It's a hard problem.

Yeah. Did you try to kind of sometimes kind of measure it in a way or some kind of put some data into it?

I mean, we have some data that we use to measure it, et cetera, but it's, like I said, it's an unsolved problem for us.

You know, we recently, you know, the reason I'm kind of curious about this personally is we've, at some point we reached like 250 people, right? And we have very slim margins and just so many roles and, you know, we are in the SDR space. So, you know, probably you would expect the ratio of the SDR to customer will be one of the biggest one, but appeared that our ratio was one of the smallest in the industry and we had so many other roles that are very important to deliver success to a customer. Yeah, and we've kind of stayed with that because every time I talk to my C-level, it's like, no, these roles and these departments are critical. If we optimize them, it could be catastrophe in the company, right? Like your customers are churning. I say, all right, fine. At some point in time, we had to cut the fat off or cut, you know, and kind of just really kind of optimize because we've had a bad year. And to my surprise, and to my co-founder's surprise actually more, like delivery didn't change, customer didn't start leaving us more or, you know, something. And then for me it was like, and then those people that say, oh, it was so critical, now they're saying, you know what, yeah, it's fine, we are fine, we're just, you know, we're going there. So what I'm trying to understand is, and now we are like 850 people, so we are literally kind of reduced the size much. But now we're leaner and I feel like we might be faster, but I might be mistaken in a way. So I was just, you know, trying to kind of pick your brain on—

You probably aren't. Like, I mean, I do think that, yeah, this is probably one of the areas where Elon is a little bit misunderstood in the media. Yeah, obviously we saw the story of Twitter where you know, he laid off what, 80% of the staff. And the narrative was like, how's it gonna stay up? How's it, you know, it's gonna collapse under its weight. And I don't know, I never noticed really any downtime. Like it kept working. And so clearly, like at least from a technology perspective, all those engineers were not necessary to run a product like Twitter. You know, You see this too, like when he comes into new companies. Yeah, I think he's willing to do a thing that most of us struggle with, which is he will find what is truly necessary by cutting into the bone. And yeah, I think he's so obsessed with doing that that he will cut— he's willing to make those cuts because if it— for, for those of us who are not willing to make that cut, we actually never know. Like, we're never— we never know for sure, was it truly necessary? And so you have those debates internally. You're like, is this rule necessary? Is that not necessary? We don't know. Like, the only way you will actually know is if you're willing to cut all the way into the bone. You actually have to feel the bone and go, oh yeah, it was necessary. Stuff actually started to break. But most of us aren't willing to go that far. Like, we'll, we'll cut some we'll try and drive efficiencies here and there, but we're not willing to intentionally break something so that we can know where the theoretical frontier is.

Yeah. I'm one of the people that didn't cut deep enough and that created a domino effect of like being always strapped for cash or for money to be able to kind of optimize it. So, and then at the end of the day, you're still gonna deeper, you're gonna cut by cut, you're still gonna go deeper, but it's worse than just kind of getting yourself some leeway, right? And now, do you think that it's, you know, we all are like CEOs, like you and me and others need to get to the point of, you know, of trying to take a risk to cut deep enough or it's just a more kind of a personality thing? Because like for me, it is a very difficult decision because like I have other people, like I have a, my managing director or my head of sales or my head of marketing, that that's their call. And I'm kind of playing from, playing of them in a way, right? So if I coming in and say, no, we're cutting da da da, and I'm kind of not listening to their, what they're telling me and how they think about solving their problem, then I'm literally taking that accountability from them to myself and then trying to kind of run the, all the, wear all the hats at the same time. But pushing them, you know, too far. So again, the question is like, have you thought about like being more, you know, kind of a butcher to the bone type of, you know, CEO more often and just see how it goes?

I think my approach has more been how do you free up people to go do bigger and better work. So rather than sort of, you know, butcher it, you might say, hey, I'm going to take this set of people and I'm going to put you on a new project. And so the old thing is like now leaner, slimmer, can move more efficiently and fast, but you've also now freed up these new folks to go attack a new area, a new surface area. And so you can get more out of it on that side. Like that's how, that's sort of always been my mental model. I think that works if you're confident in the talent bar in your company. Like if you have exceptional folks that can solve, you know, problems, can move laterally across the organization, then you have the freedom and the ability to do that. But if you don't have that, like you've hired specialists everywhere where it's like, well, the only job I can do is this job, then I think you are in a situation where you probably have to cut and then hire into the new thing. Instead. Um, that's where I kind of get excited about AI, circling back to it, is I do think the upskilling is a lot faster these days. It's so much quicker to learn something and learn the basics of a thing. So in theory, this like ability to be— move laterally across the different problems and solve different things, it should make all of us a lot more, uh, dynamic in terms of the problems we can go solve. And that, that's one of the really exciting opportunities I think with AI is organizations that figure that out should be able to move into a lot more areas and shift staff and personnel more readily into other places because they have to sit, sit back and wait for, oh, you know, the brand team has a 2-week backlog. So like, you know, we got to sit and wait for them to do the thing. It's like, well, if you can make your own commercials and your own, you know, creative, like, why don't you just go do that today? What's stopping you?

Yeah, but then lots of people are going to come back to you and say, hey, you know, there's so many changes, there's so many things happening at the same time. You're asking us to do all of those other things that is not part of the job. So, you know, it just creates that additional chaos for us that, you know, because of that, the other part of the job is not there. Have you had those type of conversations?

Well, this is where I think, you know, we, we haven't as an industry, I think, started to really reckon with this shift, um, where you're gonna see the despecialization of jobs, where, you know, it used to be you'd have, you know, a frontend engineer, a backend engineer, a designer, a product manager, infrastructure, you know, so on, so on, so forth. You have all these different roles. I think you're just gonna start to see them shrink. And like, right, you know, more of those skill sets are gonna be captured inside one person. You're just gonna have this concept of a builder. But for organizations that have built, been built up in the sort of like old hierarchy, there is gonna have to be an evolution of how the talent inside those organizations work. Um, yeah, this is where like change management and culture matter a ton. Like the companies that that, you know, inspire the team to make those shifts, that put education opportunities in front of people, I think they're going to find that it is easier for them to make that shift versus the companies that approach this with more of a zero-sum mindset that are like, hey, I am going to just like slash and burn. And, you know, we are going to sort of cut and rehire. Like, I think if that's sort of your default approach, You inject fear into the company and then it makes it a lot more difficult to get people to where you ultimately want them to go.

Yeah. I would love if there are more people like you that are kind of more excited about the change and more excited about like the exciting things. But unfortunately, there's so many people that are like status quo and like the comfortable way of them they are, right? And you kind of come in and you try to kind of put your energy and just like, okay, we can do all of that. It's like, yeah. And then the next meeting they go back to the square zero and just do the other thing, right? I've personally like every time when I see that's happening in a sales team, it kind of pisses me off because like I very work with the sales team very often. And when I see like kind of marketing kind of pushing and integrating AI and doing other things and then the sales team cannot build a fucking spreadsheet because it's not prebuilt for them or something. And, you know, because that's not their job, I'm always like, oh my God, guys, come on. You know, and this is just an example of a high intellectual individual who is great at closing deals. But besides that, they're like, you know, just living in their own, you know, little bubble in a way, right? And yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's where you like, you know, I think there's gotta repeat yourself. You gotta show the way you gotta do it. And you know, as optimistic as I am, like, I recognize that there are individuals who are stubborn and stuck in their ways. Yeah. And, you know, I think the, like, guidance I have for those folks is like, hey, you know, that you can— that can be the choice you have, is to sort of just like keep, keep doing the job as you've always done it. It's going to catch up to you. Yeah, it is. Like you're going to have to find a way to adapt because— and it may not be today, may not be tomorrow, may not be this year, but before you know it, your skill sets are going to be out of date and yeah, it's going to be forced on you 100%. Why not? Why not figure it out now? And it's— and it actually is cool. That's the— that's the thing I don't understand is like, this technology is so cool. You're just like, I can literally do things that were so hard to do you know, a decade ago. So that's the part I struggle to understand where I'm like, what's to be fearful of? Like, look at all this cool things that you are now individually capable of doing. That's the part where I'm like, I don't see how people can't get excited by it.

Yeah, I think it's more like a problem-solving type of thing. So like, because you are, you know, your psyche works in the problem-solving, you see something and you think, oh, it's a problem, I can solve that. And you just learn by default to be excited about the, you know, solving of the problems and new stuff. And I'm like very similar person and I have lots of people like that. But when I meet someone that is not that default person, so any new problem is a very energy consuming for them. So need to spend more time because they did not learn to do that because they have a playbook, right? And yeah, but you're right. I think that just all of us should learn through that because we could be obsolete. Now talking about obsolete, like do you hire lots of Gen Z in your company?

Remind me, what is Gen Z?

I think it's like those that are born after like 2000. Yeah, 2005, probably. Yeah, so like 20, they're like 18, 19, 20-year-old right now, probably like something like that.

Yeah. I'd not too many. Yeah. Yeah. So if they're, if it's after 2005, they'd be 20 years old, I'd say.

Yeah.

Uh, yeah, I don't, I don't know that we have that many, uh, Gen Z inside of Zapier. We'll have folks in their 20s, but yeah, early 20s, like, you know, post-college or pre-college. Yeah. I guess college age, probably not.

Um, I don't have a lot of Zelle and then I'm just kind of very curious about this market then see like, oh, you know, would me working with, with you know, with that generation, would it, are they more open to change, more dynamic, they're learning more or opposite to that? So I thought that maybe you have some insights for me.

No, you know, I don't. The only thing I would point to is I think there's always a tendency for every generation to look at the next generation and talk down on it and be like, ah, my day, you know, shucks, we did this, that and the other. And, you know, I, I think generally, you know, they're smart, talented people who are building on the shoulders of giants every step of the way. And so I think probably the next generation is going to be capable of some incredible stuff that my generation wasn't capable of because we didn't have that foundation set for us. And so, yeah, I think, you know, we'll probably see, uh, a bunch of incredible stuff built by that generation and then the generation after that. And if I'm lucky, maybe I get to see the generation after that.

How many years until we see a one-person billion-dollar company powered by kind of AI? Oh shoot.

I think it's probably pretty soon. Yeah, I think it's gonna, I think the way in which it happens is gonna be different than how people expect. Coming back to the Jeff Bezos quote, your margin is my opportunity, right? So if there is a one-person, $1 billion revenue-generating company, um, obviously somebody's going to look at that and go, how do I get access to them? So that makes me think that the way in which this happens probably has to have some exceptionally rare attributes to it. And the, the closest I can think of is probably some amount of celebrity associated with it. Like, you look at Taylor Swift, you know, Taylor Swift is a billionaire now. From what I understand, her team is very small, like less than 10 people. Um, so there's a question of like, you know, is there a like superstar, like personality celebrity out there who can hone their craft, whether it's music or sports or whatever, to like, you know, take their celebrity and then use AI to be able to do all the back-office stuff that those folks generally need help with. You know, you see athletes who say, I need a business team because I don't, I don't know anything about this stuff. But, you know, are obviously capable of themselves generating that much economic value in the world. So I think there's going to be some, some— there has to be some interesting attributes to create it such that it's very difficult to compete without one person billion revenue company.

Right, yeah, or some kind of unique new industry or new wigs, like a thing with this kind of Popmart and that kind of Lulu type of thing, which I do not understand, like just going up, you know, and just like, how? It's never been done before, right? All right, I have an interesting section. This or that section, so just choose one and if you can give me context why, all right, so as a first business, bootstrapped or raise capital to go faster?

First business?

Yes.

I think it is probably easier to bootstrap your first.

Easier to bootstrap your first. A lot of bootstrap founders would tell you that it's not been easy for them, you know?

I didn't say it was easier or easy.

Right, it was just a bit easier. You, you know, just the people who raised and you, yeah.

I think you learn a lot more bootstrapping.

Yeah. All right. Um, shipping fast with some bugs or shipping perfect but slower?

I think you have to do the first. The only way to ship bug-free software is to not write any software. And so, yeah, I think you just accept that like, well, if you're gonna ship bugs, it's better to ship 'em faster and learn where they exist and then go fix 'em.

Founder intuition or data-driven decision?

I think when you're starting something, it has to be from intuition, like it has to be the founder's observations from the market. I think as you have more customers, then I think it becomes more of a mix of the two where you're— you better be listening to the data, you better be paying attention to what they're saying. But then how you go apply that, That's where some of the intuition comes in.

Hiring externally or promoting internally?

I think internal is generally better, but you are going to benefit from some external folks, new blood, fresh eyes from time to time.

Do you have any specific guideline or playbook for yourself when you need to hire externally opposed to promoting someone internally?

You know, I think for our, at least for like our executive roles, I generally would much prefer if there's somebody ready or even close to being ready, I would much prefer to promote within. So generally when we're going externally, it's like, I just think it's too big of a step up for the individual in a way that's gonna set them up for failure and hold the company back.

Right. Being early to a market or being the last one standing?

Well, last one standing sounds great. Like, you're still standing.

All right. Building a calm company or chasing hypergrowth? I'm asking this to a person who is, who advise people doing 10% growth week over week, which is like, for me is like 10% growth week over week is like, wow, what?

Yeah, I think it kind of just depends on the market you're in. Like, there's some markets where you just have to go like winner take all, winner take most, and like, you got to go, you got to go climb the mountain, you got to do it now. So go figure that out. That said, like, growth solves a lot of problems. So I probably fall on the growth side of the house more so than the calm. Though I feel like these don't have to be pitted against each other.

Last one, a quiet life in Missouri or 2x year-to-year growth in the next few years?

Do I have to choose? Like, why can't I do both?

That's the rules of the game. These are the rules.

My family's in Missouri. I'm taking my family above everything.

Awesome.

Weasel my way out of these questions.

Yes. Yes. All right. I have one last one for you and I will let you go on. What were some of the best learnings for you over the years of building remote company and in terms of the culture development or just bringing people like, again, I moved remotely last year. It's been difficult, but I'm trying to, so I'm get whatever you can give me in terms of the learnings you've got over the years, you know, building to 750 people in the remote environment. I would kind of appreciate that.

Yeah, just a small one for the end here. Um, uh, what are the lessons learned? I mean, one, the fact that you care about culture. That means you're going to go a long way. I think, too, you got to be very intentional about it. You know, you don't get to expect like serendipity to just sort of like manifest itself inside of a distributed company. You have to show up every day and will the culture into existence, will the camaraderie into existence, and, you know, make sure that you're being very intentional about, you know, who you hire, who you fire, like, you know, the types of behaviors and rituals you reward, you disincentivize, things like that. I think on the margins, you need strong communicators in a remote company. Like, you, you don't get to work with people who are bad communicators. They have to be crisp. They have to communicate early. They have to communicate often. They have to be strong in writing. Um, That's super important. Um, I think this is obvious, but distributed companies have an enormous talent pool that they can recruit from. So do not settle for mediocre talent. Like, go get great people. Um, I saw like a, um, interesting, like, bell curve of, like, you know, who— it was like one of these studies that tries to, like, you just say, hey, do you— are higher performers remote, are they, you know, in offices, etc.? And it's a big old bell curve. And, you know, basically what it showed was you're sort of like top 5% are better working remotely. And then you've got this big sort of like middle part of the bell curve where folks are generally like modestly more productive in an office. Uh, and then at the tail end it gets pretty extreme where they're a lot more productive in an office. And so you sort of look at that and you go, oh, interesting. Most of us, if you take that at face value, which I'm not sure, like these studies are, it's hard to replicate them. Um, but if you take it at face value, it feels intuitively true. Most of us are probably a little bit better in an office. A little bit, not much, but a little bit. And so your job is to be like, how do you find that top 5% who actually are better in a remote and who like have that insane and like insatiable drive, insatiable curiosity, who care so much about the customer, they're just gonna solve these problems no matter what. Like that's the type of people you want in your company.

Thanks, Wade. All right, well, it's a, it's a wrap. I appreciate you being part of Falcon's Podcast, man.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Michael. This was fun.