How Wade Foster (Nearly) Bootstrapped Zapier to $5B

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier, an automation business most recently valued at $5 billion.

In the episode, Wade discusses why Zapier only raised around $1M and unpacks Zapier’s strategies for growing profitably. Wade shares lessons from building one of the first remote-only companies in tech, including key tips for hiring, onboarding, building a great management team, and much more.

Wade is definitely a first principles thinker around all things business. One of the most raw and engaging episodes to date.

(0:00) Intro
(1:50) What does Zapier do?
(5:06) Only raising $1.3 million
(13:27) Lessons learned from starting Zapier
(18:23) Zapier's ecosystem and partners
(24:24) Finding Product-market-fit
(29:31) Getting rejected from YC
(33:35) Was it obvious who from YC was going to blow up?
(41:36) Does Zapier have a board
(46:18) The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work
(51:45) Building trust among a remote employee base
(54:47) Importance of onboarding experience
(1:01:57) The future of remote work
(1:07:06) When to bring in experienced execs
(1:09:50) Interviewing candidates
(1:16:30) OKRs are BS
(1:19:30) Are CEO coaches just snake oil?
(1:24:44) SEO Landing Pages
(1:28:47) What has you excited about AI?
(1:34:29) Relationship with Sam Altman
(1:40:45) What would you tell 23-year-old Wade?

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson

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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.