#179 CEO & Co-Founder Zapier, Wade Foster: Missouri’s Connector
Grit26 Helmi 2024

#179 CEO & Co-Founder Zapier, Wade Foster: Missouri’s Connector

Guest: Wade Foster, CEO and co-founder of Zapier

When Wade Foster and his co-founders launched Zapier, he was 24, and doubted himself constantly. He consulted mentors like Paul Graham and Jay Simons, studied entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs, and also took inspiration from an unlikely source: Actor and martial artist Bruce Lee. “[He] had this fighting style, ‘The Way of No Way,’” Wade says. “He would study all the different fighting styles, and he would say, ‘None of them is the best or the worst ... My job was to take the best of each and then discard the rest, and make it my own.’”

In this episode, Wade and Joubin discuss fully remote companies, long-term thinking, hyperscaling, product-market fit, broken products, secondary offerings, “delocation packages,” interview questions, mind-breaking growth, doubting yourself, LLMs, hackathons, and adding a sales team (eventually).

In this episode, we cover:

  • (01:10) - Living in central Missouri
  • (04:15) - Will Wade do this forever?
  • (10:23) - Startup envy
  • (13:09) - “Do people actually want this?”
  • (18:44) - What Zapier does
  • (20:15) - Taking outside capital
  • (22:43) - Why Zapier is fully remote
  • (28:01) - The pace of hiring
  • (30:35) - Why résumés can be a trap
  • (37:09) - When to promote from within
  • (41:06) - Scaling problems
  • (43:47) - Self-confidence and mentors
  • (47:37) - Reacting to ChatGPT
  • (53:43) - How Zapier’s team uses AI
  • (58:12) - Who Zapier is hiring

Links:

Jaksot(279)

The Man Who Builds for the Decade Ahead | Founder of Google X, Waymo, and Udacity

The Man Who Builds for the Decade Ahead | Founder of Google X, Waymo, and Udacity

What does it take to reinvent entire industries, over and over again?This week on Grit, Sebastian Thrun, the “godfather” of self-driving cars and massive open online courses, reflects on a career push...

29 Syys 20251h 13min

How WordPress Became a Web Giant | Automattic Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg

How WordPress Became a Web Giant | Automattic Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg

What kind of founder builds a billion-dollar company around something anyone can use for free? Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, joins Joubin Mirzadegan to reflect on two ...

22 Syys 20251h 10min

The Central Nervous System for Modern Business | Confluent CEO Jay Kreps

The Central Nervous System for Modern Business | Confluent CEO Jay Kreps

The apps and websites we use every day depend on systems most of us never see.Jay Kreps joins Joubin Mirzadegan to share how Confluent became the ‘central nervous system’ for companies like Expedia an...

15 Syys 20251h 17min

Airtable’s AI Reboot with CEO Howie Liu

Airtable’s AI Reboot with CEO Howie Liu

Can a no-code giant reinvent itself in the AI-native era?This week on Grit, Airtable CEO Howie Liu shares what it means to “refound” a company, how speed comes from tearing up old playbooks, and why c...

8 Syys 20251h 7min

Inside the Mind of the World’s Most Optimistic CEO

Inside the Mind of the World’s Most Optimistic CEO

For Bill McDermott, work has never been just a job.On this Labor Day rerun of Grit, first published Jan 9, 2023, the ServiceNow CEO reflects on what he learned from his earliest jobs and how he carrie...

1 Syys 20251h 9min

How Dropbox Beat Big Tech in the Cloud Wars

How Dropbox Beat Big Tech in the Cloud Wars

How do you win when your competitors are the biggest companies in the world?This week on Grit, Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston retraces the path from a bus-stop prototype to competing head-on ...

25 Elo 20251h 32min

Building High-Impact Sales Teams | Dan Lee and Nooks

Building High-Impact Sales Teams | Dan Lee and Nooks

Even with AI, sales still comes down to human connection. This week on Grit, Dan Lee shares how Nooks automates busywork like research and dialing for thousands of sales teams, letting reps focus on t...

18 Elo 202558min

Shishir Mehrotra on Building Tools Creators Love

Shishir Mehrotra on Building Tools Creators Love

What if your tools shared context like your team does?This week on Grit, Shishir Mehrotra shares how the Coda and Grammarly collaboration unlocks context as a “superpower,” reflects on his early days ...

11 Elo 20251h 29min

Suosittua kategoriassa Liike-elämä ja talous

sijotuskasti
psykopodiaa-podcast
mimmit-sijoittaa
rss-rahapodi
rss-lahtijat
rss-rahamania
rss-neuvottelija-sami-miettinen
rahapuhetta
ostan-asuntoja-podcast
rss-porssipuhetta
rss-laakispodi
rss-h-asselmoilanen
rss-startup-ministerio
rss-bisnesta-bebeja
taloudellinen-mielenrauha
pomojen-suusta
sijoituspodi
rss-rikasta-elamaa
rss-yrittajat-ymparillani
rss-porssipodi