Wade Foster on AI
From Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work · · Matt Britton
“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 software for me. I needed this thing and so I built it and I'm happy. And I think that's really neat that you can kind of have that phenomena. I think the second thing that you're seeing is the way software gets built, professional software gets built now is changing.”
On , Wade Foster, CEO & Co-Founder at Zapier, spoke about AI during Zapier’s Wade Foster on AI Automation, No-Code Tools & the Future of Work on Matt Britton.
About Wade Foster
Wade Foster, CEO and co-founder of Zapier, has been discussing the company's internal adoption of AI and its implications for the future of work. Foster stated that after the launch of GPT-4, Zapier called a "code red" internally, leading to a company-wide AI hackathon that raised daily AI usage from under 10% to over 50% in a single week, and later to 97%. He described the creation of an "AI fluency rubric" used for hiring and performance reviews, and said the company's headcount is around 800 people, all remote. Foster has also commented on the distinction between deterministic workflows and AI agents, which he described as software that can be given a goal and its own reasoning to complete tasks. He has said 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 also reflected on Zapier's early history, noting that the company was bootstrapped and raised only $1.3 million in venture capital before reaching a $5 billion valuation. He described a "don't hire until it hurts" philosophy and an early SEO distribution strategy borrowed from a creator of bingo card websites. Regarding the broader AI landscape, Foster said that while AI may be overhyped in the short term, he believes it is "being underhyped" over the next decade. He has also argued that the declining cost of producing software will lead to more niche products being built, and that AI systems with access to all of a company's tools can know the business "better than any individual in my company."