Lessons from Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier

On Founding and Early Days

On the genesis of Zapier: "We started the company as a side project. Three people – just, me and my co-founders – we had a problem that we wanted to solve for some of our consultant clients. We wanted to build something together because we thought it would be fun."
On early traction: "We were just the local Internet folks—if it required the Internet, we'd say 'Hey, we can help with that.' Then Bryan realized we were getting a lot of integration work—like sending WordPress forms into Salesforce, PayPal sales into QuickBooks, that sort of stuff." [1]
On finding the first customers: "One of the cool things that startups can do that big companies can't is to go fishing in small ponds. There are little channels that a big company would never waste their time on, because it doesn't have meaningful impact. But small companies can get in there, and it actually does move the needle." [2]
A specific tactic for finding early users: "So we hung around forums—like Evernote, Dropbox, and Highrise forums—and listened to complaints. Someone would ask, 'Why doesn't this app have an integration with this?' And we'd say, 'Hey, you can use the API to build this stuff, and we can help you out.' Each time we did this, we'd get a few new beta customers." [2]
The importance of a sustainable business model from the start: "In the Midwest, fundraising isn't really a thing for a small business. You can't be a smart engineer, walk out of the door, and get $100,000 or $200,000 in seed funding. From the get-go, we were thinking about how to build a sustainable business, not just how to build an app or a product." [2]
On the initial product: "The early product was rough around the edges. It was tough for people to use. So with a paid model, we got folks that cared—it proved we were building something worthwhile." [2]
On launching early and iterating: "Your product your ideas it won't survive contact with customers. so you have to show them what you're working on launch earlier than you're you know comfortable. doing um you know launch again launch again just keep showing customers and just keep iterating your way through it." [3]

On Product and Product-Market Fit

A contrarian take on product-market fit: "I actually think product Market fit is actually one thing it's not a sequence of things you want your product and your go to market to be sort of one fluid motion." [4]
On the feeling of finding product-market fit: "I do think product Market fit seals. you know if you've got it it sort of feels like the boulder is like rolling down the hill. and you're just trying to catch up with it it's like this is working and I'm not even sure why."
On the importance of distribution: "I have Founders come up to who are struggling it's like I've got a great product. I got to go figure out how to get distribution. for this thing and I'm kind of like well are you sure maybe it's a well-engineered. product or a well-designed product that absolutely could be true but is it a product that anyone cares about because if no one cares about it. and you don't have distribution engine that shows that people care about it think you might want to go back to the drawing. board." [4]
On the power of a freemium model: "Once we felt like the product was polished enough—where a free user could sign up and didn't need support to be successful—we opened it up as a freemium model. We wanted people to be able to play, because the beauty of Zapier happens when you get in there and see what you can make." [2]
On the evolution of the product: "When we added Multi-Step, you could have many actions on it which opened up a whole new set of use cases for Zapier which really helped from like a growth and differentiation standpoint." [5]

On Company Culture and Values

The essence of company culture: "Culture is not ping-pong tables and office snacks. Culture is how you go about your day." [6]
On codifying values: "You have a culture whether you write it down or not. I think writing it down helped us scale it out. We doubled down on the good traits and built an organization that really lives out those values." [6]
Zapier's core value of "Default to Action": "One of our core values is 'default to action.' We really want to hire folks who can identify problems, break them into pieces, and solve them." [6]
The importance of transparency: "If you want to default to action, you need a strong culture of transparency, because people need the right information to make informed decisions." [6]
On empathy: "Empathy over ego. Our customers and teams are part of a global community." [7]
The value of continuous improvement: "Grow through feedback. We set ambitious goals at Zapier. We want our customers, people, and company to grow. Achieving these goals requires us to regularly learn and improve." [7]
On building a helpful company: "I just was talking to one of our new engineers earlier this week, and he mentioned how often the phrase 'happy to help' comes up around here. We're a very helpful company." [6]
The purpose of values: "Values can do two things: they can reinforce the things that you care a lot about and that are inherent to you, but they can also reinforce the things that you should be better at. They can help hold you accountable, too." [8]

On Hiring and Scaling

A counterintuitive hiring philosophy: "Don't hire until it hurts." [9]
The rationale behind slow hiring: "Lots of folks have said to us, 'You're growing, you could grow faster if you hired more people.' I think a lot of companies and investors overpitch growth at all costs, but sometimes that causes a 'more people more problems' issue." [9]
On hiring senior talent: "Hire senior people sooner. People that have been there and done that but are still scrappy." [10]
The importance of an effective onboarding process: "Invest in a strong hiring and onboarding process from day one." [10]
On recruiting adaptable employees: "In any startup... things are constantly changing -- your role and the people around you. So you need people who are adaptable." [11]
The challenge of hiring executives: "Hiring executives is one of the hardest things you'll do as a CEO. It's hard to determine when to start hiring executives, exactly what you're looking for in an executive, and then find that person." [12]
How to know when to hire executives: "The best way to figure out when to start hiring executives is to meet with people who are unquestionably good executives at companies a stage or two further along." [12]
The skill that gets you hired at Zapier: "We'll hire you into ANY role at Zapier. Seriously, any role. 100% of our open jobs are up for grabs... Part strategist, part builder. Fully fluent in automation." [13]

On Remote Work

The foundation of a successful remote team: "The default for most companies is that they don't trust you. For his company, the default is: 'We trust you. We think you're smart, we think you're talented, we want you to come work here. We're going to treat you like an adult. Just come do good work, thats all we ask.'" [14]
On remote work and company DNA: "It's in our DNA to work this way. Bryan, Mike, and I started working on this project through chat, pull requests, and Trello cards. So we figured out a way to make remote work, and it makes sense to us." [2]
Remote work as a talent advantage: "You get 'access to the world's best talent,' rather than be limited to the San Francisco Bay Area." [11]
On fostering camaraderie in a remote setting: "Developing camaraderie within remote teams — now that's definitely different than an office environment. We have various rituals to help promote camaraderie. We do a weekly random pair-buddy session and just talk through whatever comes to mind." [6]
The "de-location" package: "We noticed two times where someone living in the Bay Area applied for a job at Zapier, got hired, and within a few months they left the Bay. And in both cases, they moved back home to be near family and friends... We're saying that you can have a great job, and you can take care of your family at the same time. It doesn't have to be a trade-off." [2]
Remote work is not a panacea: "Scaling challenges aren't about working in an office or not—it's just part of a growing company. Office companies face this problem too." [2]

On Leadership and Growth

The CEO's evolving role: "In the early days, you're in the trenches... Now, one place I feel I am most needed is the vague concept of setting the vision and communicating that vision." [12]
The power of consistent effort: "So much of company building is literally just showing up day after day and doing that for a really long period of time and just putting in the work." [9]
A simple philosophy for improvement: "It stands for this idea of every day you show up, just make things one bit better. And that sentiment can easily get lost in the midst of grand strategies or visions." [9]
On fundraising: "There are moments when it can help you, and there are moments when it can hinder you. You should strive to understand when external funding is a good tool to use versus when it is not." [12]
The bottleneck to growth: "The biggest bottleneck for organizations is the ability to ingest new teammates." [11]
The importance of staying close to the work: "By doing the work ourselves... we really understood. every aspect of the business we understood customer acquisition. we understand the product we understand support we understood the finances we understood the culture."
On the importance of customer obsession: "If you're working on something. important. and you like really obsess with these customers they're just going to be so excited that somebody cares about the problem that they have." [3]

On Marketing and Strategy

A different perspective on demand: "Instead of using the term 'demand generation,' Wade prefers to think of it as 'demand harvesting.'"
The power of search marketing: "Search marketing is entirely demand harvesting because you're taking keywords that people are already searching for and you're trying to get your pages to rank well for certain keywords so that your solution to this problem is front and center for folks."
Focus on what matters in the early days: "A lot of stuff just doesn't matter in the early days. A/B testing just doesn't matter because you don't have enough traffic to even run sufficient A/B tests."
A bottom-up approach to campaigns: "I like to approach this problem from the bottom up. What do I need to solve right now?"
The long-term value of content marketing: A significant portion of Zapier's growth has been attributed to its comprehensive blog and guides that address user problems and integrate relevant keywords. [15]
Leveraging partnerships for growth: "We could start saying things like, 'Oh, if you wanna be public on Zapier, we're gonna need you to do these marketing activities in exchange to be listed on it.'" [5]

On the Future

The commoditization of software development: "What it takes to build software is it's basically becoming commoditized... give it two years and I think it'll be effectively. free to like build stuff."
The rise of the creative class: "The all the like benefits. now are going to acrue to folks who are creative. idea people people who actually have ideas which is a little bit counter to what it has been the last 10 years."
The potential of AI agents: "The exciting thing with agents is that there's a lot of use. cases. that don't fit. the you know classic. like you know when this trigger."

Learn more:

Lessons from Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier

On Founding and Early Days

On Product and Product-Market Fit

On Company Culture and Values

On Hiring and Scaling

On Remote Work

On Leadership and Growth

On Marketing and Strategy

On the Future

Written by Antoine Buteau

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