Wade Foster

“We made a big pricing and packaging change in January of 2024. Very customer friendly. We gave tons of revenue back to our customers because we just sort of looked at it and said, you know, if we keep going about this the way we're going, um maybe we make more money in the short term, but over the next decade, I felt l...”

— From Zapier's CEO: AI Is a People Problem, Not a Tech Problem, Between Two COO's Podcast - Michael Koenig (September 28, 2023)

“We weren't having a technology problem. We were having like just hey there's this there's like a just an organization and operationalization of this stuff and like you know people psychology issues and things like that.”

— From Zapier's CEO: AI Is a People Problem, Not a Tech Problem, Between Two COO's Podcast - Michael Koenig (September 28, 2023)

“I think the thing that we resisted for a long time was how much do we want to make Zapier fit for the enterprise. And this was a place where I mean I live and breathe startups. I live and breathe small business. Like that's a thing that I understand. I feel it in my bones. I'm very passionate about. And you could feel...”

— From How Zapier Really Started: YC Rejection, $100 Beta, and AI’s Big Shift, MKTG Reboot: Making BIG Shifts (June 23, 2026)

“We did YC and then at the end of YC there's this thing called demo day. And you pitched a bunch of investors. And we raised about a million bucks and change at the tail end of that. And then we just treated it like the last money we were ever going to get. And so that's the only primary capital that Zapier has ever rai...”

— From How Zapier Really Started: YC Rejection, $100 Beta, and AI’s Big Shift, MKTG Reboot: Making BIG Shifts (June 23, 2026)

“The big goal that we are gaming for right now is we want to shift from what I call individual AI to institutional AI. So when you look at most companies, it is not hard to find a number of people that are like 10x the transformative employees, whatever you want to call them. These people have just been massively accele...”

— From How Wade Foster Is Rebuilding Zapier for the Age of AI Agents, Get Paid (March 13, 2025)

“You can find companies that are growing really fast. I mean, you look at Anthropic and OpenAI and, you know, even some of these other AI companies, but even when you go look at their operations, their operations actually don't look that much different than what you or I were doing in 2015. Like, they're kind of running...”

— From How Wade Foster Is Rebuilding Zapier for the Age of AI Agents, Get Paid (March 13, 2025)

“Ours was in 2023 when the GPT4 launch came. We called the code red and said, 'Hey, like this is this is totally going to like it like it totally changes our business.' We had seen the chat GPT launch and were excited about it but we hadn't yet gone like oh this is this is that code red moment. What was different for us...”

— From How Wade Foster Is Rebuilding Zapier for the Age of AI Agents, Get Paid (March 13, 2025)

“I think the thing that really stands out and look, this always stood out. It just is like much more important now is how curious are you and how fast do you learn. Those two things are like are basically the entire name of the game now. Like it just doesn't matter like how much you actually know about a thing because t...”

— From How Wade Foster Is Rebuilding Zapier for the Age of AI Agents, Get Paid (March 13, 2025)

“I genuinely probably the thing I'm most contrary on is the fundraising path. Like I sort of feel like more people can go much further with much less money than they think. And I think it's even easier than it was before because these AI tools make it so much easier to build. So that's probably the one place where I'm l...”

— From How Wade Foster Is Rebuilding Zapier for the Age of AI Agents, Get Paid (March 13, 2025)

“I think the one of the things we got right very early on was we had a at the time somewhat novel approach to distribution. Now it's been copied over and over again. But we borrowed this tactic from a guy who made bingo card sites of all things. And he'd realized that he makes these bingo card sites, teachers will buy t...”

— From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work, Matt Britton (April 29, 2025)

“I think a lot of folks treat that as like an ordered list where it's like, okay, do the product, okay, then do the market and then make the fit, but it's actually one thing where it's like the best products, you can't distinguish between what's the product and what's the marketing. It's just so integrally tied together...”

— From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work, Matt Britton (April 29, 2025)

“We had a very different approach to hiring than I think most companies did which was we just didn't hire till it hurt. And part of why we did that is we wanted to make sure that every person that joined the company, there was a very real and visceral need for them. And we knew exactly what task assigned them cuz you'd...”

— From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work, Matt Britton (April 29, 2025)

“I think we're already seeing two really big use cases. One is the age of personal software, where you as a person who has a need, you can just make something for yourself and you can use it for yourself. You don't have to try and sell the thing. You don't have to do anything else with it other than it's just like it's...”

— From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work, Matt Britton (April 29, 2025)

“I think the real unlock that AI brought to tools like Zapier is the ability to work with unstructured data and unstructured text. You know, before to your point, everything had to be like very mechanical. And so, you know, there was use cases that that's great for. It's like when this happens, do this, do this. But the...”

— From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work, Matt Britton (April 29, 2025)

“The most important shift that is happening right now is software will predominantly be built and used by an agent and not a human.”

— From Zapier CEO: Why Companies Can't Ignore AI Anymore, Product Faculty (May 01, 2026)