Zapier's initial customers came primarily from SaaS community forums
Wade Foster · How Zapier Became Profitable in 3 Years and Scaled to $5B with Wade Foster · Dec 11, 2024 · at 5:07
Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier. He explains how Zapier acquired its initial user base before joining Y Combinator.
0:00 / 0:06exact quote · 6.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The very first customers all, all came mostly from these community forums.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Wade Foster
Wade Foster says startups should charge beta users to filter noisy feedback
“Everyone's like, oh, we should make it free. So we get more usage, et cetera. And I just think that that's a really tough place to be. Cause you're going to get a lot of just like noisy feedback from people who actually really don't have this problem. Whereas …”
Early customers tolerate poor software if founders care deeply about their problem
“Like most, most people don't have an entrepreneur who deeply cares about solving their problem. And so even if the software is not good, they'll be okay with it because like you just have a passion and excitement for it.”
Wade Foster says initial product ideas will not survive customer contact
“You gotta like make your product, your ideas. It won't survive contact with customers. So you have to show them what you're working on. Launch earlier than you're, you know, comfortable doing.”
Wade Foster says early growth at Zapier was an engineering problem
“We knew the thing that would create, cause us to grow is more integrations. Cause every new integration meant new landing pages. It meant new partnerships. And that was, More customers coming our way. And so basically growth became really about an engineering …”
A company's decline starts when it stops doing small customer-focused things
“I think it's so easy to lose that stuff as you get bigger. It's like, ah, we're a big company now. Like we only do big company things. But that's kind of when I think the decline starts and the decline might be long. Like you might have like so much like insti…”