Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier, discusses pricing models and explains why freemium is difficult to sustain without outside venture funding.
Disclosure
Zapier pays $10,000 to new Bay Area hires to relocate elsewhere
“If you're in the Bay Area and you take a job with Zapier, we'll pay 10,000 dollars to help you relocate to anywhere, or so we call it delocate.”
Insight
Tech media overvalues Silicon Valley because VCs avoid traveling for deals
“And so they end up having to rely on proxies for that. And a good proxy often is, you know, where's the venture funded companies happening and venture funded companies have tend to happen closest to where VCs happen to live because they don't like to travel th…”
Insight
True winner-take-all markets are rare in B2B software
“Whereas in B to B, like it's pretty rare to have like true winner take all markets. You know, if you're making yet another CRM company you know, there's dozens of CRM companies that are very good CRM companies that compete with each other head to head and are …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zapier hired 15 people post-announcement but paid zero delocation bonuses yet
“So we've actually hired about 15 folks since then, and only one person from the Bay area. She's in the process of, like, mulling over whether she wants to take it or not, but so we actually haven't offered any, because we haven't hired any folks in the Bay Are…”
Insight
Startups should adopt proven management frameworks instead of inventing new ones
“I think a lot of companies, at least in startups, like they try to reinvent the wheel here. I think it's not probably a great idea, especially if you're growing really fast. It's, there's, like, a lot of good, like, scientific-backed research on, like, how to …”
Disclosure
Zapier joined Y Combinator for Silicon Valley network access, not capital
“The primary reason we did YC wasn't for the capital. Primary reason we did YC was because we were from Missouri relatively unknown and not well connected into the broader tech ecosystem, particularly for our product, which is integrations with other SAS compan…”