CEO & Co-Founder, Zapier
IBG 71 – Wade Foster – Creating a Work Culture with Introverts in Mind
Shownotes and links for this episode can be found at http://sarahsantacroce.com/episode71 Workplaces are rarely set up with ...
About Wade Foster
Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, has described 2023, following the launch of GPT-4, as a "code red" moment for the company, stating that the pace of AI development "rewrites everything" and prompted a serious rethinking of the company's roadmap and operations. Foster has discussed a strategy of shifting from "individual AI" to "institutional AI," aiming to change how the entire company operates rather than just accelerating individual employees. He noted that Zapier went from "roughly just under 10% of folks using AI daily to now over 50% of the company using it daily" as part of their workflow, and has since released a second version of an "AI fluency rubric" used for hiring and performance reviews. Foster has also stated that "the most important shift that is happening right now is software will predominantly be built and used by an agent and not a human." Foster has shared that Zapier's early growth was driven by a "don't hire until it hurts" philosophy and a novel SEO distribution strategy borrowed from a creator of bingo card websites. He has expressed a contrarian view on fundraising, suggesting that "more people can go much further with much less money than they think," particularly with the aid of AI tools. Foster has emphasized that curiosity and learning velocity are now the most important traits for employees, as "we all have these LLMs that just know far more than you." He has also predicted that while AI may be overhyped in the short term, it is "being underhyped" over the next decade, and that the decreasing cost of producing software will lead to more products being built for niche consumer problems.
Transcript (47 segments)
✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
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Sarah Santa Croce0:08
Hi and welcome to episode number 71 of the Entire Best Growth Podcast, the show where I talk to introverts who grow their business and make a difference. As always, I'm Sarah Santa Croce, I'm your host, this is my podcast, and I'm excited for another great episode. This week I have another introvert tech guy for you. He's your stereotypical techie who built his online startup which now has 200 employees, all working 100% remotely from 26 different states and 17 different countries. I'm talking about no other than Wade Foster, the CEO and co-founder of Zapier. I'm personally a big fan of Zapier and I use it a lot in my business. I'm all about efficiency and Zapier definitely makes you more efficient. If you're not familiar with Zapier, here's what their website says about them: Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your favorite apps such as Gmail, Slack, MailChimp, and over a thousand more. You can connect two or more apps to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build integration, so you can move info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. It's easy enough that anyone can build their own app workflows with just a few clicks. During the conversation, I'm sharing my favorite zaps and I also asked Wade to share his favorite apps. So I'm really excited to share this conversation with the founder of the probably most introvert-friendly company out there. Just a side note on the audio quality: unfortunately my audio tech stars were out of sync once again and Zoom picked up the wrong mic for the recording, so I sound like I'm hiding in a barrel, but luckily Wade's audio is fine and that's the one that matters, right? So apologies for that, and now without further ado, here's my conversation with Wade.
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Wade Foster2:19
Wade, so good to see you.
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Sarah Santa Croce2:22
Yeah, good to see you too, Sara. Thanks. I mean, we saw each other with the audience. As I just read in the official bio, you're the co-founder of Zapier and that's kind of a great company, especially great for introverts. So tell us why and how you, as the introverted founder, how that works for you.
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Wade Foster2:48
You know, Brian, Mike, and I started Zapier about seven years ago, and it started as a side project to help people automate all the different work they have between all these applications that they use. But one of the interesting things about Brian, Mike, and I is all three of us are introverts. And given that it was a side project, we didn't have an office or anything like that, and so as we grew, you know, we kind of set this up as a remote company. And I think we distributed companies in the maybe attracting more introverts than perhaps an in-office company does. And I think a lot of it has to do with it's a strong written culture and a strong written environment that we've created here. It's a lot of reflecting on your work, thinking deeply about what you do, and then writing out your thoughts and things like that, which tend to appeal to introverts at times. I think the culture that we built here certainly appeals to introverts perhaps more than others.
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Sarah Santa Croce3:46
Interesting. Yeah, so you have 170, I think, employees. Are they all over the world, all over the US, or how does that work?
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Wade Foster3:55
We have folks all over the world. About two-thirds are in the US and one-third are scattered across, I think, 17 different countries.
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Sarah Santa Croce4:04
Mm-hmm. And I remember when definitely, I think she's a member of your team, she kind of introduced you by email and she sent me a couple of bullet points and she said that there was an event that you recently organized, some kind of company retreat, where you have these stickers sometimes.
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Wade Foster4:21
Oh yeah. So we do one of them. I think an important thing about remote companies is you do need to have some in-person time. You know, humans do need to connect with other humans, that's a fundamental thing about us. And so even though we do work remotely, we do these company gatherings twice a year where we fly everybody in and we spend time working together throughout the week. That said, not everybody works from home all the time, and so it's a different type of environment for everyone. So it's a little nerve-wracking, like, 'Oh, what should I do? Who do I talk to? Can I talk to these people? Is that okay?' So we added to the badges that have your name on it how outgoing you are, like do you prefer hugs or handshakes, these little things that just kind of help people feel a little bit more comfortable with being in person for the first time for some of them.
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Sarah Santa Croce5:18
That's great. I think every kind of conference or event should have something like that, maybe not hug handshakes necessarily because, you know, people within the same company don't necessarily want a hug. People that you have conversations with are just kind of these icebreakers that make you understand whether you're more introverted or extroverted. Also, what I find at these conferences is often that the schedule is so packed that there's hyper introverts just kind of go and have some alone time, so just have some possibility like small groups where you can just kind of go and hang out.
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Wade Foster6:07
Right. And I think it goes beyond introverted and extroverted. I think it is about creating an inclusive environment where folks feel like they're part of the event, they belong there. And there are other little things that we do to help with this. One of our teammates introduced us to this concept of the Pac-Man method. If you've ever played the game Pac-Man, it's a little head that has a mouth that's open and goes chomping up these dots. Well, the Pac-Man method is if you're standing with a group of people, you should stand like a Pac-Man where it leaves an open hole for the mouth so that anyone who is interested in joining your group has the space for them. So it makes it easier for outsiders to kind of walk in and enjoy the group. Most of the time when you're talking to a group of people, you make a full circle, and so it's kind of hard for an outsider to poke their head over someone's shoulder and be like, 'Can I join this conversation?' So it's just little things like that help create these more welcoming environments that make it easier for any type of introvert to interact. It really just builds a more inclusive environment.
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Sarah Santa Croce7:18
Let's talk a bit about how Zapier generates revenue. So I know you have a subscription, right? Tell us how that works and if you have other revenue streams.
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Wade Foster7:32
The main thing that we do is we help folks be more productive at work by connecting the common tools they use. So we have integrations with things like G Suite, Slack, Trello, MailChimp, Facebook, you name it. And it's free to get started, so we have a free plan that allows you to get the basics. Then as you use more of the product, if you put more volume through, you set up more zaps, we have a subscription model that starts at $20 a month and scales up as your usage grows for bigger and bigger teams and companies. And that is the core business model that we have.
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Sarah Santa Croce8:06
Would you consider that passive revenue or is it not really passive because you have your team constantly developing?
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Wade Foster8:14
Yeah, definitely not passive revenue. It's something that 170 people work on full-time day in and day out to help everyone be more productive at work. That's really the end goal for us.
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Sarah Santa Croce8:27
So what do these 170 people do? Is that customer support or is it mostly new development?
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Wade Foster8:34
It's a mix. About 60% of the folks are working in engineering, working on the core product, making sure all the functionality exists that customers need or are interested in having. We have another about 50 folks that are working in customer service, which are helping people get set up with the tool, that sort of thing. And we have folks in marketing and design and analytics and HR, things like that, that help run the company on a day-to-day basis as well.
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Sarah Santa Croce9:02
Right. So how does it feel for you and your other two friends that started this company, just thinking, 'We're just kind of a bunch of geeks who start a small company,' and now we have so many people? How does that feel as three introverted business owners?
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Wade Foster9:18
It's exciting, honestly. To have this kind of impact on our customers, to have this kind of impact on the people who work with us, it really is a lot of fun. There are things where if you're an introvert, you have to be cognizant of your own personal load and things like that. The nice thing is, as one of the founders and the CEO, you can kind of design the organization in a way that helps you be successful too. That doesn't mean that if I have a teammate who's extroverted and they need me to get my energy up, they need to have discussions, they need me to engage them, I'm going to be willing to do that because that's what I think good leaders do: you meet people where they're at. So sometimes that stretches me outside of my comfort zone, but I think that's also good for me for my own personal development.
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Sarah Santa Croce10:07
Right. So let's talk about these comfort zones. What would you say is one of your biggest strengths as an introverted entrepreneur?
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Wade Foster10:15
For me, one of the ways that I think is writing. If I'm trying to introduce a new concept to the team, maybe a difficult strategy we're trying to implement, or there's a difficult problem in front of us, one of the ways that I like to solve it is I like to go off on my own. I'll take my dog on a walk, I'll think through it, then sit down and I'll write out here's what I think about this. And I find that I'm a much more concise communicator when I have the time to write down my thoughts and really think through what it is that I'm trying to say to people. So that is the way that I feel it's a strength of mine.
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Sarah Santa Croce10:52
What about a challenge? You know, you go walk with your dog, since you're remote, and is that ever a challenge to feel kind of isolated and lonely, or do you have so much interaction online that that has never been an issue?
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Wade Foster11:08
You know, I get a lot of interaction online. We have Zoom calls much of the day. Zoom is amazing, I use it all day every day it seems like, to talk to teammates and things like that, and catch up on what they're working on, to help collaborate on different projects. And I never feel like I'm disconnected or lonely. But I know that others in this similar environment, they do have to manage their own kind of loneliness setting, for lack of a better word, to make sure that they are getting that engagement that fills up their tank.
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Sarah Santa Croce11:44
Right. So if that's not an issue, then what is? Or maybe you don't have any.
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Wade Foster11:50
No, I mean, there are things that are certainly challenging. For example, I have teammates who like to debate things, and they like to, in a group meeting, really debate things. When things get stressful, they like to engage even deeper on those sorts of stuff. Whereas for me, when we start debating, when things start to get stressful, I like to go on a walk, think things through, write it down, that's how I think. But then I have these other teammates who like to work in this way. I think for me, it's recognizing, 'Hey, this is what helps them out,' and so I'll help engage in this meeting, but I'll recognize this isn't for me, this isn't what's helping me out, but it's for them. I'm doing this for them to help them get to a place that they need to be at. But those things are challenging for me, and can be challenging for the teammates too, they want more out of me in those times. So I think that's one of the things that's really smart when you work in groups is to figure out what each other's personal work styles are and then talk through how we're going to handle working through these things when we have different work styles.
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Sarah Santa Croce12:52
Right. And that is in itself a challenge, I think, because a lot of fellow introverts, and probably a lot of listeners, they're actually fine working on their own and maybe they chose that for their online business because they're like, 'Oh my god, these colleagues at work, they're driving me crazy and I'm just better off on my own.' I guess the nice thing is that it's your company and you get to choose whoever you want to work with. Still, there is power in working with folks that are different from you, you get different perspectives, you see the world in a different way, and I think that's important. I think introverts can often go off on their own and be like, 'Hey, I'm just going to do this by myself,' but if you do that, if that's the only mode that you ever operate in, you lose out on a valuable perspective that's worth seeing.
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Wade Foster13:40
Yeah, definitely. And I think it's so true. Every now and then, even if you don't necessarily have to have your own team, you should just run projects with other entrepreneurs together just to keep practicing that muscle, because if you're always doing everything on your own, it's true, you lose that flexibility.
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Sarah Santa Croce14:01
Exactly. Take us to an aha moment, sometime where you have this big realization. Tell us a story, an aha moment.
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Wade Foster14:11
You know, I think this isn't related to being an introvert or anything like that, but one of the things we had as a core philosophy at Zapier for a pretty long time was, 'Don't hire till it hurts.' We like keeping the company small, we like keeping teams small. In fact, we still like keeping the company smaller and keeping teams small and things like that. But one of the things that we found ourselves in was that we launched this new feature and all of a sudden had about 80% more signups on a daily basis than we were getting previously. And at that time, our customer support team was about six people. So pretty much overnight after launching this new feature, we needed to grow from 6 to 12 on that team because we were getting twice the volume of customers coming in the door and they were asking twice as many questions. And that kind of forced us to look and say, 'It takes us three months to find a person, it takes us another three months to get them up to speed. If we wait till it hurts and we're growing this quickly, by the time we have that person in the door, by the time they're ramped up, it still hurts because we've continued to grow even further past that.' So it really forced us to say, 'Okay, this don't hire till it hurts thing, well good in theory, we need to get better at forecasting what the growth of this business looks like so that we can get ahead of hiring needs and make sure that we have the staff trained up, otherwise the work's going to be really stressful because you have six people doing the work of what 12 people probably should be doing.' So that was one of those things where we just kind of had to change the way we thought about the business a little bit.
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Sarah Santa Croce15:52
Yeah, it's interesting because when you're starting out, you probably have this kind of mentality of bootstrapping and you just don't know that you're going to grow. As entrepreneurs, we always have to adapt. I'm glad you realized to look ahead and think already, 'Okay, what kind of people do we need for the future?' All right, let's talk about I call them the three golden nuggets. These are kind of habits or resources. The first one is a personal habit, something that you do on a regular basis, daily or whatever, that you think contributes to your success.
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Wade Foster16:29
You know, one thing I started doing, well, I've done this since the beginning of Zapier, and we ask that everyone in the company does this. It's called a Friday update. Since that's the end of the week, everyone writes a little bit of what they did that week, what they're planning on doing next week, maybe some stuff about what they did outside of work, and they publish it to our internal site. It helps keep everyone up to date on what's going on, but the real power behind it is the sharing is certainly valuable and reading through what your teammates are doing is certainly valuable, but I think the most power comes from the self-reflection that comes from having to think about your week and really reflect on like, 'Hey, what am I focusing on? How am I helping our customers? And am I doing the right things?' One of the things I've done recently with this habit, I've been doing it since the beginning of Zapier, in the last year I really changed it up to spend an extra 30 minutes, an extra hour every week writing about a topic to the team that resonates with me, whether it's a trend that I'm seeing in the customers or in a market, whether it's how to handle some particular challenge that we're facing internally. It kind of just is whatever strikes me as interesting of the week, and I'll write a few extra paragraphs to really help share what I think is important for the company that week. And that helps build a lot of alignment across the whole organization because they're kind of getting to hear what I think is most relevant to us every single week. It forces me to clarify with myself what I think is relevant and important. So that act of writing and reflecting every week, I think, has been a really strong personal habit that's helped my success over the years.
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Sarah Santa Croce18:17
Great. Yeah, what about usually I ask for kind of an internet resource, but what I want to ask you is actually what's your favorite zap? There are thousands, but what's your favorite integration?
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Wade Foster18:33
Yeah, so one of my favorites is one of my simpler ones. Apps that I use, we use Slack internally as a team, and with 170 people in Slack, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of different comments, messages, and things happening left and right. And for me, that's difficult to keep up with everything that's going on. In fact, I don't even try to keep up with everything that's going on. However, there are certain threads that I do need to follow up with, but if I'm on mobile or if it's happening when I'm away from my keyboard for whatever reason, I might forget that I need to follow up on that. So one of the zaps I have set up is that whenever I star a Slack message, I have it send me an email. And so I use my email inbox as a way to make sure to follow up with all these internal communications that I think are relevant for me to follow up on. So it's a really simple zap: 'Hey, when I star a message, send an email.' But it's a really powerful one that I use every day and it helps me keep up to date on what's going on with the company.
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Sarah Santa Croce19:41
Right. All right, I'm going to share mine too. My favorite ones are the integration between WebinarJam and a Google spreadsheet. So whenever someone signs up, I get them added to a Google spreadsheet. I love that. The other one is the one with Acuity where when someone books a clarity call with me, I also get those people added to the Google spreadsheet. So I love those two. It's so simple but saves you so much time and really keeps you organized.
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Wade Foster20:14
Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like you like to organize with Google Sheets as a place to stay on top of things.
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Sarah Santa Croce20:21
Exactly, yeah. What about a book that you would recommend to the audience and why?
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Wade Foster20:27
You know, I think a classic that has really shaped how I think is Dale Carnegie's 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.' It really has just a lot of no-nonsense, tactical, real ways to engage and work with other people. And if you're an introvert, maybe that doesn't come naturally to you, and I found it a really useful way to help build relationships with folks.
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Sarah Santa Croce20:50
Right. My son is 15 and he's even more introverted than I am. He has like one or two good friends, but I kind of snuck that book into his Kindle. But let's do it. There are so many simple kind of tips and stuff in there that just makes it easier to be open to other people.
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Wade Foster21:16
Yes.
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Sarah Santa Croce21:18
Great. The last question comes around marketing and marketing with integrity. So when I say 'marketing with integrity,' what comes up for you? What do you think of?
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Wade Foster21:29
You know, I think where marketing goes wrong is when the delta between what you say you're providing and what you actually provide is not the same. Like you're overselling, you're saying that you do more than what you can. I think the best marketing teaches, it educates, it informs, it delivers on the value. So if you have a product that really does help people, if you can have the impact that you think you can have, that's when marketing is at its best, because you combine marketing with a great product with a great story, and all of a sudden you're able to deliver something that really has meaningful impact on folks. Often marketing goes off the rails when you toss it on just a not very good product or a not very good service, and that's never going to feel very good.
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Sarah Santa Croce22:23
Yeah, you're right. It's kind of like it doesn't feel authentic because you're telling me the moon, but you can probably not actually commit to that. So right. Well, this has been a great conversation, Wade. I really appreciate it. I think you're running an amazing company and I'm sure the 170 employees would agree. Did you say that they're all introverted?
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Wade Foster22:49
No, no. I just know that it comes up pretty regularly. We definitely have our fair share of extroverts at Zapier. Oh yeah, we definitely do. And even one of our extroverts wrote a post for our blog that was like 'How to Be an Extrovert Working Remotely.' So they have their own tips and tricks for working through life. I think that's whether it's introvert, extrovert, or any other dimension, all of us kind of have our own work styles and we all have to find ways to work better together. So I think it's useful for folks to tackle those things head-on.
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Sarah Santa Croce23:25
I have one final question. What are you grateful for today, or this week, or this month?
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Wade Foster23:33
I just spent last week at an off-site with the executive team at Zapier. We've added two new folks to our executive team this year, we've got some folks who've been on the team for quite a while, and every time I get to go heads down with that group of folks, I just come away feeling so grateful that I get to work with these people every single day. They push me, they challenge me, they're smarter than me in a lot of ways, and so I'm just a fan of getting to work with the executive team and of course the greater Zapier team as well.
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Sarah Santa Croce24:01
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.
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Wade Foster24:07
Please, thanks for having me, Sarah. It was a blast.
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Sarah Santa Croce24:09
Thanks. Doesn't that sound like a great company to work for? Now if you're not using Zapier in your business yet, definitely check them out at zapier.com. And you'll find this episode's show notes with all the links at sarahsantacroce.com forward slash episode 71. And as always, if you're listening to the show on a mobile device, you can click on the description and you'll actually find all the clickable links there. I also like to invite you again to leave me a review on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever else you're listening to this episode. It really means a lot to me and it helps other introverts find this show more easily. This is Sarah Santa Croce signing off from the Entire Best Growth Podcast. Remember, you need to use your unique introverted superpowers in order to make a difference. See you soon.