#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)

Chief Business Officer at Compass, Rob Lehman: Leadership by Fire

Chief Business Officer at Compass, Rob Lehman: Leadership by Fire

Rob Lehman, Chief Business Officer at Compass, has an entrepreneurial spirit that has already set him forward in a burgeoning and exciting career at a young age. Rob’s path has come by no accident. Hi...

4 Okt 202152min

COO Cameo, Brian Frank: From Professional Networks to Celebrity Networks

COO Cameo, Brian Frank: From Professional Networks to Celebrity Networks

To say that Brian Frank, Chief Operating Officer of Cameo, comes from a non-traditional background into the career field of sales might be an understatement. Brain’s career began in law and he spent n...

27 Sep 20211h 4min

President of Field Operations at BetterUp, Marc Maloy: Building Better Organizations by Building Successful People

President of Field Operations at BetterUp, Marc Maloy: Building Better Organizations by Building Successful People

Marc Maloy’s storied career with IPOs and acquisitions has helped him develop essential insights into career success, leading him to become President of Field Ops at BetterUp.While Marc’s history is s...

20 Sep 202158min

CEO Incorta, Scott Jones: From Running Sales to Running a Company, and Everything in Between

CEO Incorta, Scott Jones: From Running Sales to Running a Company, and Everything in Between

Since the 1990s, Scott Jones has had a successful career working in sales at technology companies including SAP, Tableau, and Alteryx. In early 2021, Scott took a job that had never before appeared on...

13 Sep 202148min

Head of eSports at Activision Blizzard, Brandon Snow: Building 'Generational Fandom' of Professional Video Game Teams

Head of eSports at Activision Blizzard, Brandon Snow: Building 'Generational Fandom' of Professional Video Game Teams

Ever wonder how McDonald’s came up with its famous “I’m Lovin’ It” tagline? Brandon Snow knows all about it — in fact, he worked for the German advertising agency Heye & Partner when it pitched the wi...

6 Sep 202155min

Head of Revenue and BD at Asana, Oliver Jay: The Cutting Edge of Product-Led Growth

Head of Revenue and BD at Asana, Oliver Jay: The Cutting Edge of Product-Led Growth

When Oliver Jay worked for venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates in the late 2000s, he found that the most rewarding aspect for him was working with portfolio companies and watching the begin...

30 Aug 202146min

SVP Sales at Affirm, Eric Morse: Exploring The Partnership Between Engineering and Sales

SVP Sales at Affirm, Eric Morse: Exploring The Partnership Between Engineering and Sales

Eric Morse is unabashedly a “super nerd.”With a degree in physics from Duke University, Eric taught himself how to program and joined a consulting firm where he worked at implementing PeopleSoft, a hu...

23 Aug 202148min

CRO Front, LB Harvey: Moving Up-Market + Operational Excellence

CRO Front, LB Harvey: Moving Up-Market + Operational Excellence

Many successful LinkedIn alumni have been welcomed as guests on this podcast — and this week, the insightful LB Harvey will be joining those ranks.After starting her sales career as a Sales Executive ...

16 Aug 202145min

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