#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:

Avsnitt(279)

CMO Airtable, Archana Agrawal: Success Is Not a Formula

CMO Airtable, Archana Agrawal: Success Is Not a Formula

Archana Agrawal started her job as CMO of Airtable on March 18, 2020 — the same week that the US began to “shelter in place” as cases of the novel coronavirus rapidly rose. With kids who would be stay...

16 Maj 20221h 3min

CMO Square, Lauren Weinberg: Self-made boss

CMO Square, Lauren Weinberg: Self-made boss

As the CMO for Square, Lauren Weinberg spends a lot of her time talking to new and inexperienced small business owners — and she knows that each of them has wisdom that the others could benefit from. ...

9 Maj 20221h

Co-Founder & CEO Handshake, Garrett Lord: The Billion-Dollar Question That Changed College Recruiting

Co-Founder & CEO Handshake, Garrett Lord: The Billion-Dollar Question That Changed College Recruiting

Handshake CEO and co-founder Garrett Lord was amazed when he first learned that Silicon Valley firms like Google recruited on college campuses ... just not his, Michigan Technical University. But afte...

2 Maj 202252min

CMO Thoughtspot, Scott Holden: Tactics, Strategy, and Downhill Skiing

CMO Thoughtspot, Scott Holden: Tactics, Strategy, and Downhill Skiing

ThoughtSpot CMO Scott Holden spent eight years at Salesforce, putting in the time every year behind the scenes at Dreamforce watching the company reach 20,000 employees. And he probably could have thr...

25 Apr 202256min

Co-founder & CEO ZoomInfo, Henry Schuck: This Job Is Not Supposed to Be Fun

Co-founder & CEO ZoomInfo, Henry Schuck: This Job Is Not Supposed to Be Fun

Every year, ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck writes a memo to his executive team, which is made to look like a letter to the board of directors. Even though he founded DiscoverOrg — the company that bought a...

18 Apr 20221h 6min

CRO Articulate, Jaimie Buss: A Problem Solver That Happens to be Good at Sales

CRO Articulate, Jaimie Buss: A Problem Solver That Happens to be Good at Sales

Jaimie Buss, CRO of the e-learning platform Articulate, had an epiphany several years ago. While trying to simultaneously give her toddler a bath and catch up on work emails, some water splashed on he...

11 Apr 20221h 1min

CMO Tinder, George Felix: Trusting Your Gut, ‘Smelling Like a Man,’ and Swiping Right

CMO Tinder, George Felix: Trusting Your Gut, ‘Smelling Like a Man,’ and Swiping Right

George Felix, now the CMO of Tinder, was marketing Old Spice body wash at a time when the brand was circling the drain. His team at Procter & Gamble almost let their big break slip away when initially...

4 Apr 202259min

VP of Sales at Hopin, Javier Ortega Estrada: Ingredients for High Growth and a Good Paella

VP of Sales at Hopin, Javier Ortega Estrada: Ingredients for High Growth and a Good Paella

Global Sales VP at Hopin Javier Ortega Estrada’s father is a counter-terrorism official in the Spanish army — teaching him at a young age that having a bigger purpose can drive you to do great things....

28 Mars 202254min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
rss-jossan-nina
varvet
rss-borsens-finest
uppgang-och-fall
bathina-en-podcast
svd-tech-brief
lastbilspodden
fill-or-kill
avanzapodden
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
borsmorgon
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
dynastin
market-makers
affarsvarlden
tabberaset
24fragor
rss-dagen-med-di