“If you tried to build a company like ours before, I don't think you have like all these APIs that you can go connect and do this stuff. Like most companies aren't building and doing stuff in this way. If you try and build it, you know, a year later, there's already other companies doing it. There was probably a half dozen startups that had a similar idea in this timeframe, give or take.”
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
Opinion
Salesforce wins through its massive distribution engine, not product superiority
“The thing that actually helps Salesforce win. It's not necessarily that the product is amazing. It's that they have this incredible distribution engine that is really difficult to compete against.”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 15:32Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
Insight
Startup people problems are often just symptoms of underlying business model issues
“A good business makes a lot of this stuff a lot easier. Like, if you're making good money, if you're growing, if there's plenty of opportunity to go around, there's plenty of money to go around, salaries and bonuses and things like that, everything gets way ea…”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 30:24Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
Insight
'Don't hire until it hurts' forces founders to learn every role firsthand
“We had this rule, don't hire till it hurts... One, it meant we did every single job. So we understood every piece of our business. So when we hired somebody in that meant we knew exactly how they were going to be effective, what was going to help them win. And…”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 32:38Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Zapier's early customer acquisition costs rounded to zero via SEO distribution
“You know, we figured out how to, A really good distribution engine that meant our customer acquisition costs like rounded to zero.”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 9:06Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
Opinion
Replicating Zapier's programmatic SEO playbook today is impossible
“And if you tried to replicate it today, like, you couldn't do it because everyone has copied what Zapier has done now and It's just too competitive.”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 10:21Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
Insight
Foster: Product-market fit is obvious because customer demand makes growth easy
“How do you know if you have product market fit? And I'm always like, well, you know, because people want what you have. It's not actually that hard if people actually want what you're selling. They don't want it, then everything seems hard. Everything feels im…”
Wade FosterOct 5, 2023▶ 24:10Contrarian takes on growth, hiring, and fundraising | Wade Foster (Co-founder & CEO at Zapier)
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, about 80 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.