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

Episoder(279)

Flexport’s Third Act: Winning in a Broken Global Trade System

Flexport’s Third Act: Winning in a Broken Global Trade System

Flexport was a breakout success—reimagining global trade with tech at its core. But when the freight market cooled and efficiency overtook service, things started to unravel. Founder Ryan Petersen ste...

14 Apr 20251h 43min

Brex 3.0: Inside the Radical Turnaround with Pedro Franceschi

Brex 3.0: Inside the Radical Turnaround with Pedro Franceschi

Guest: Pedro FranceschiPedro Franceschi is the co-founder and CEO of Brex, a fintech company reshaping how businesses manage their finances.Originally from Brazil, Pedro went from teenage hacker to le...

7 Apr 20251h 35min

From India to Silicon Valley: The Jay Chaudhry & Zscaler Story

From India to Silicon Valley: The Jay Chaudhry & Zscaler Story

Before Zscaler was a $32B cloud security giant, it was just 10 engineers—half in Bangalore, half in a borrowed U.S. office.As founder and CEO of Zscaler, Jay Chaudhry bet $50M of his own money on one ...

31 Mar 202556min

The Unlikely Path to Building a Billion-Dollar Gov Tech Company | Zac Bookman

The Unlikely Path to Building a Billion-Dollar Gov Tech Company | Zac Bookman

Guest: Zac Bookman, CEO and Co-Founder of OpenGovThirteen years after co-founding the government transparency startup OpenGov, Zac Bookman is still finding ways to surprise people. In 2024, Cox Enterp...

24 Mar 20251h 16min

Bootstrapped to $12B: Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut on Life After the Exit

Bootstrapped to $12B: Mailchimp’s Ben Chestnut on Life After the Exit

Guest: Ben Chestnut, Former CEO and Co-Founder of MailchimpIf you find yourself selling your startup, then Mailchimp co-founder Ben Chestnut has some important advice for you: Get a dog. When Intuit b...

17 Mar 20251h 11min

Meet the Man Who’s Making Supersonic Flight Possible Again | Blake Scholl

Meet the Man Who’s Making Supersonic Flight Possible Again | Blake Scholl

Guest: Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO of Boom Supersonic“Passion and drive trumps knowledge and experience,” says Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl. Long before he was running Boom — which earlier this ye...

10 Mar 20251h 28min

#232 CEO NetApp, George Kurian: New Chapters

#232 CEO NetApp, George Kurian: New Chapters

Guest: George Kurian, CEO of NetAppFor almost 10 years, George Kurian has been CEO of the data infrastructure firm NetApp, overseeing its pivot to cloud services. After he  took the job — a surprise p...

3 Mar 202558min

#231 CEO & Co-Founder Harvey, Winston Weinberg w/ Ilya Fushman: Worthy Sacrifices

#231 CEO & Co-Founder Harvey, Winston Weinberg w/ Ilya Fushman: Worthy Sacrifices

Guests: Winston Weinberg, CEO & co-founder of Harvey; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins“If you think about pretty much any job out there in the world, we will have some sort of [AI] copilot...

24 Feb 20251h 5min

Populært innen Business og økonomi

stopp-verden
dine-penger-pengeradet
e24-podden
rss-borsmorgen-okonominyhetene
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
pengepodden-2
utbytte
finansredaksjonen
morgenkaffen-med-finansavisen
rss-sunn-okonomi
livet-pa-veien-med-jan-erik-larssen
okonomiamatorene
tid-er-penger-en-podcast-med-peter-warren
pengesnakk
lederpodden
rss-fa-makro
rss-markedspuls-2
lederskap-nhhs-podkast-om-ledelse
boligbobla
rss-andelige-tanker-med-camillo