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My First MillionHow a $5B founder is using AI (3 tutorials)
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75 min read · 15,287 words- 0:00 – 2:27
intro
- SPShaan Puri
Wait, wait, Sam, you gotta clickbait it up. How a $5 billion founder is using AI to change his life.
- SPSam Parr
Well, are you a five bill- What are you guys worth now?
- WFWade Foster
Who knows?
- SPSam Parr
You know.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
You know. You. You.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[upbeat music] All right, we should do a little intro. So first, do you... Is it... I've been saying Zapier my whole life. Is it Zapier or Zapier?
- WFWade Foster
Zapier makes you happier is the trick. It rhymes with happier.
- SPSam Parr
Zapier makes me happier.
- WFWade Foster
Yep.
- SPShaan Puri
Wow. Dude, how is that not your slogan? Here's your, here's what your slogan is on your site. "The automation layer for agentic AI." It doesn't really flow the same way as Zapier makes you happier.
- WFWade Foster
It doesn't. It doesn't. We could-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
So there's two things from the name. We... One, we just couldn't afford the second P when we started, [laughs] like the domain was available.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
But the other, like, we were too clever for our own good, is it has API in the name, which we always thought like, "Oh, that's neat," 'cause it's all connecting all these, these APIs and all that good stuff.
- SPSam Parr
I didn't even notice that.
- SPShaan Puri
Didn't notice that.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Obviously didn't even notice the P was missing.
- WFWade Foster
Like I said-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
But it also, if you put Zapier makes you happier, I would've read it as Zapier makes you happier.
- WFWade Foster
Zapier makes you happier. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
Just go on with your day.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] But we're happy you're here.
- WFWade Foster
Thank you.
- 2:27 – 7:04
The sales pitch
- SPShaan Puri
what you're doing with AI. Can you give me a public sales pitch real quick? I'm requesting a sales pitch, and what I want-
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
... is I know how OG V1 of Zapier worked-
- WFWade Foster
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... where you connect one app to another. You're saying, "Hey, we have this new AI product that you use with Claude," presumably makes your Claude or ChatGPT usage more powerful-
- WFWade Foster
Yeah
- SPShaan Puri
... whatever. I haven't been using that. I also, here's the other caveat, I'm kinda dumb.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
So, like, imagine talking to somebody with half the IQ of yours.
- SPSam Parr
He's like, "Can you give me a pitch to someone who's sort of dumb and doesn't listen?" [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
But thinks they're smart at the same time.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
The confidence of a smart man.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah. [laughs]
- WFWade Foster
I have really good news for you though. Like, I think AI is this incredible gift to people who are kinda dumb.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
Because you can just-
- SPShaan Puri
Agreed
- WFWade Foster
... talk to it and say like, "Hey, I didn't understand that answer. Explain it to me like I'm five."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- WFWade Foster
And so you can keep, like, going down the dumbness sta- stack, I guess, for like lack of a better word, until you understand it, and then go, "Okay, now, like, teach me back up to where I need to go."
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- WFWade Foster
So okay. The sales pitch. You want the sales pitch. In the old world, you know Zapier. You know, come in, build integrations, connect apps. The new world has a lot of the same things, but it's different. Nowadays, you're hanging in Claude, you're hanging in, you know, Codex or Cursor or, or, you know, OpenClaude or what- whatever it is that you like using, right? And you're just talking to it, going back and forth. Most people start with that. AI as a chatbot is valuable, but it's only generally smart. It knows everything that the internet knows. It doesn't know anything about your business. So the next step that you need to go to is to start connecting your tools. You start connecting your CRM, your help desk, your email, your team chat, all this stuff, and you feed that context into the AI. Now when you start asking it questions about My First Million and all this other stuff, you get not just generally smart answers, you get hyper-specific answers around how your business works. Okay? So if you install Zapier into this, you can hook up any of the tools that we have, right? So that's, that's the first thing, the first bit of value. And the first thing that people sort of experience is like, oh, connecting stuff makes sense. But look, you can do native connectors and all that other stuff. So-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- WFWade Foster
... you know, use Zapier or use the native connectors, do whatever you want. The next layer, and where this gets really powerful, is not where you're sitting having this like back-and-forth conversation. It's when you're actually deploying automations and agents to actually go operate for you while you sleep. Like, that's where you start to get the real magic. And the reason you wanna use Zapier to do that versus, like, any of these generic agent builders-
- SPSam Parr
What, what's an, what's an example?
- WFWade Foster
I mean, like, you know, Claude has routines or ChatGPT-
- SPSam Parr
Got it. Okay
- WFWade Foster
... has scheduled stuff. Like, you know, there's a bunch of these things that can kinda do agents or pseudo agents these days. But the nice thing about Zapier is that if you use us, we are going to make it so that whatever you build is optimized to run more deterministically than agentically. And I don't think people have caught up on this yet, but you've probably experienced it.
- 7:04 – 14:13
My Robot Executive Staff, Waking Up Like The President
- SPShaan Puri
is cool.
- SPSam Parr
You gave us a list of stuff, so we said, "Wade, what are you, what are you making?" And it doesn't always have to be, like, this, like, crazy, like, game-changing stuff. But what are you making with AI? And you gave us a list of, like, three or four things. You said you have robot staff-
- SPShaan Puri
By the way, Sam, you gotta clickbait it up. How a $5 billion founder is using AI to change his life.
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Well, are you a five b- What are you guys worth now?
- WFWade Foster
Who knows?
- SPSam Parr
You. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
You, I mean, you know.
- WFWade Foster
I don't, the... I don't know how the markets behave right now. They're, like, up and down all sorts of ways. Like, I think the-
- SPSam Parr
What would your guess be?
- WFWade Foster
I don't think about it, honestly. [laughs] Like, I, I'm just like, "How do we build stuff that makes our customers successful?"
- SPSam Parr
Wade, I knew you were a sweet guy. I didn't think you were a liar, though.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
Because I know you think about it.
- SPShaan Puri
We're doing this podcast under oath. You know that, right? [laughs]
- WFWade Foster
No, no, no. There's the, there's the old saying, right? Like, in the short term, the markets are a voting machine. In the long term, they're a weighing machine.
- SPSam Parr
I'd rather you just tell me F off than give me these lies-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
... 'cause I know you think about it. But don't, don't piss in my back and tell me it's rain, Wade. [laughs]
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] I honestly don't. Like, I-
- SPSam Parr
Just tell me, just tell me it's none of my business and I'd accept it.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] All right. It's none of your business, right? If that-
- SPSam Parr
Okay
- WFWade Foster
... that, that helps.
- SPSam Parr
That's fair. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Since the last time you guys got valued, what did you... Where, where'd the five billion number come from in the first place?
- WFWade Foster
That was a secondary number sale that happened in 2021 maybe.
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. Are, are revenues slightly up, way up, down, way down since then?
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] Revenues are up, yeah. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. All right.
- 14:13 – 17:39
Evening brief
- SPShaan Puri
Okay. What else? So you get the morning brief. That's pretty-
- WFWade Foster
All right
- SPShaan Puri
... standard, I would say.
- WFWade Foster
So let's talk about... So I think the morning brief is pretty standard, but the one that I really like is the, the evening brief in the Scribe. So, you know, I've had... I've played with a couple versions of it. One is it runs after every meeting, and then I have another version that runs at the end of the day. I actually think this is way better than the morning br- brief. And the reason why is you can actually have the AI help you do stuff. So you know, it, this loops over all of my meeting notes from the day, so I'm using Granola for all of my meetings. It loops over all of the to-dos that are still in my to-do list for the day. It loops over all of the outstanding emails that are in my inbox for the day, and it s- And then it prompts me and says, "Hey, how did the day go?" So there's two key things that it does for me. One, when I say what, how the day went, I basically said it was a good day for this reason or it was a bad day for this reason. So now all that stuff is getting logged, and it's learning how to tune my day to help me have more good days than bad days.
- SPSam Parr
Oh, that's interesting.
- WFWade Foster
But the second thing that it's doing is it's actually taking action item stu- on stuff. So it says, "Hey, you know, you were in a meeting with Sam and Sean yesterday, and they asked for an intro to your buddy over at this company. Do you want me to go ahead and make that intro for you?" "Great. Please do that." Right? So it's drafting those follow-up emails. It's drafting all this other things, and so this is where AI starts to get really helpful, is it's not just giving you a brief and sort of teeing it up for you to do. It's now saying, "I- I'll just do that for you." And this is where I think you start to really feel the power of AI, is when you can actually put it to work. So I love Scribe, the sort of, like, post-meeting follow-up or the end-of-the-day wrap-up, because it just... I don't know. I used to spend, like, two hours at the end of my day just, like, you know, just trying to catch up on every little ticky-tack thing that I sort of got roped into. And now that, like, two hours at the end of the day is down to, like, 15 minutes.
- SPSam Parr
So you think this is legit saving you two hours a day almost?
- WFWade Foster
I... Yes. Yes. And furthermore, that, like, you know, what's good about my day and what's bad about my day part, it just helps me stay, like, focused on the things that matter. So both the AI is helping me with that, but I also will send, um... Like, I remember 90, like, about, about 90 days after I started doing this, I said, "Hey," I had this thought. I was like, "You know so much about, like, what makes me have good days and bad days. Can you, like, summarize, like, what is common about my good days and what is common about my bad days?" And it was like, "Sure," and it did all that stuff, and then I gave it to my assistant and I said, "Hey, here's, like... Please make my days look like more good days versus bad days." [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
What, what were your good days and what were your bad days? What did they-
- WFWade Foster
So for me, like, the single most important thing is I, I'm a morning person, and so I do my best work in the morning. I'm most focused. Um, you know, once, once after lunch comes around, you know, I, I'm just not gonna get anything, like, serious done. And so the most important thing is I don't want a meeting until 11:00 AM. And so you just give me that morning time where I can knock out the most critical things, and the day's gonna go great. Like, I will win the rest of the day. But if I have to, like, you know, if, if, if that time starts to get sucked into, like, firefighting mode, you can tell I'll just be grumpy at the end of the day, where I'm just like, "Ugh," like I'm not, I'm not being successful. And you'll notice this podcast started at 11:00 AM. [laughs]
- 17:39 – 19:32
AI that argues with you
- SPSam Parr
[laughs] Can you show us how to get the AI to challenge you instead of, uh-
- WFWade Foster
Oh, yeah. Let's do that. So coming back, AI that argues back. So this is pretty simple, right? I use, I use Cursor as my daily, like, agent, but in... If you're using Claude, if you're using ChatGPT, if you're using Gemini, they often have, like, a system prompt or a way that you can sort of tune, like, how it talks to you. And so in Cursor, I have a file. It's the agents.md. That's kinda what it uses everywhere. Claude has a claude.md, md. And basically, I have a file that's like how to work with me. And you know, I- You know, have it be direct and honest. I need the truth my coworkers are afraid to tell me. I need you to challenge my assumptions. I need you to poke holes in my thinking. I need you to disa- like disagree when you genuinely disagree. And these things are like goal-seeking entities. And so if you tell it, like, "What I want from you is this," it's gonna say, "Okay, well, that's what Wade wants, so I'm gonna try and give him that goal." But if you don't tell him this, if you don't make this configuration, it's going to just genuinely try and like placate you because it thinks that's what you want. And so you do have to tell it, you know, sort of guide it a little bit. So like here's an example of like, you know, a live prompt I ran ahead of time for this. I said, "Hey, I'm thinking we should kill our entire free tier this quarter because one of our competitor raised prices. Help me draft the announcement." Right? So this is like something that it should definitely like say, "Hey, press pause. Like that, that's a, that's a bad idea." And so when I do that, here's the, you know, pushback that it gives me. It's like, "Hey, that's a big move off a pretty thin signal. Before you draft anything, I want you to... I want three things on the table." So like, you know, br- bring me the data. You know, tell me like what the actual problem you're trying to solve is. You know, pricing announcements are wrong. Like, you know, is there a smaller experiment you can run?
- SPShaan Puri
That's great.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah, it's just like helping you think through, you know, these, uh, problems. And then, you
- 19:32 – 31:53
War Council skill
- WFWade Foster
know, I have this other skill that I made, which I call my War Council skill. And so this is like an even, like more-
- SPShaan Puri
Okay
- WFWade Foster
... specific version of this that I will often invoke. So I could say, "Hey, y'all, I'm thinking about hiring this person. Here's all the like notes that I've got on them from the interview panel. Like help me figure out if this person's gonna raise the bar or not." And what it will do, the War Council, is this is a... A- actually, let, let me pull back. I think I have the War Council skill in here. Uh, yeah, here it is. Um, okay. I- it didn't actually pull the skill up. So this, if you go to, uh, Zapier's GitHub, you can get a copy of the War Council. But what this does is it spins up sub-agents, and these sub-agents take on personas. There are seven sub-agents that get spun up, so seven personas. Some of them are standing members. So for example, I have, uh, the wartime COO is a standing member of the War Council. There's the ruthless CFO is a standing member. There's a contrarian board member that are, is standing members of the War Council. Then I leave four personas to be generated dynamically. So based on the prompt-
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
... it will decide who else-
- SPShaan Puri
Well-
- WFWade Foster
Who else-
- SPShaan Puri
Real quick
- WFWade Foster
... do I need to get advice from?
- SPShaan Puri
That wartime COO, you created the persona, you described its characteristics, or you trained it on like Travis Kalanick transcripts or something? Like what did, what did you-
- WFWade Foster
So in-
- SPShaan Puri
How did you do that?
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] In my case, I ha- it's gen- it's a generic version, but you could do whatever you want, right? If you want it to, to, to have like Travis-
- SPSam Parr
What does generic version mean, though? You just said, "You be a wartime COO."
- WFWade Foster
I just said, "These are the traits of..." I said, "This is the traits of a wartime COO." And it like... I said... A- actually, what I did was said, "I want a wartime COO. You know, generate that persona," and then I looked at what it created and just made some like-
- SPSam Parr
Do you have like a pretty chill, generally happy, positive outlook, like [laughs] like-
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] This is, this is, you're seeing the like the, the, the internal competitor inside of me, right?
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- WFWade Foster
Like this is the, the Kobe Bryant Mamba mentality like, you know, like coming through. I like having this like, you know, this sort of thought partner that is a little more, m- bit more like ruthless because-
- SPSam Parr
Yeah
- WFWade Foster
... that's not my, that's not my default mode, right? I want to have that kind of checks and balance there.
- SPShaan Puri
And as a CEO, you're not always gonna have people who are comfortable, available, skilled in that way around you, right? Like th- this is, this is like who you would want on your team when, when you want them to spin up. Quick, uh, stupid question. You said, "I use Cursor for my AI." I thought Cursor was a coding tool, uh, but you're-
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
It sounds like you're using it to chat and make decisions. Am I just wrong about what Cursor is or?
- WFWade Foster
Yeah, I mean, Cursor, you can use Cursor, Claude Code, Codex. Like these are all ostensibly coding agents, but they have this like agent mode where you can just talk to it, and the thing is it talks to it, but because it can write code, it can do stuff for you. And so the way, the way I try and talk to people who are not engineers and say, "Hey, you should try using this," is don't think of it as a tool for, you know, engineers to build stuff. Think of it as like you're hiring Cursor or Claude Code or Codex to be the engineer you delegate things to.
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- WFWade Foster
Where it's like you, you probably have engineers you've worked with. You like to tell that engineer, "Go build this for me," or, "Go build that for me." Like that's why I use Cursor is 'cause it goes and builds stuff for me, not because I'm using it to actually go build a bunch of stuff. I don't really write any code.
- SPShaan Puri
Wait, so, so your default when you just need to like talk to an AI or chat or ask a question, you go straight to Cursor? You don't do ChatGPT or Claude or anything?
- WFWade Foster
I mean, mostly, especially when I'm at my desktop, I'm mostly talking to Cursor most of the time. It has like different models that you can sort of toggle back and forth on, which I like, so I can, you know, test a bunch of different models and things like that.
- SPSam Parr
Are you a typer or a talker?
- 31:53 – 48:15
How to use AI to hire better
- WFWade Foster
things.
- SPShaan Puri
I- is there an example where AI kind of changed your mind or got to the right answer that you weren't at, and you decided to go with it?
- WFWade Foster
Here's an example of a place where I find AI to be really useful. Um, let's come back to the hiring example. So, you know, we, we run a bar raiser process where I approve every job offer that goes off, but like exec team member sort of is on the final part of the hiring loop, and it's intended to audit the hiring process in addition to sort of figuring out, hey, is this person gonna elevate the culture, the work, et cetera, here at Zapier? Now, in the past, pre-AI, when I would go through those approvals, I would often, you know, if I would come across a candidate where I was not so sure on, I could kind of smell something is wrong. I've just done enough interviews now, I've interviewed thousands of people, I've lo- looked over thousands of applications where I just have more reps than most hiring managers have. Like mo- most hiring managers hire, hire one or two people in a year. It's like I'm, I'm, I've just looked over like way, way more volume. And so I don't always have the language to say like why it's wrong, but I can still smell it. I'm like, r- and so I would often go to these folks and be like, "Are you sure? Something is off. Like I don't, I don't think they have this, this, or that." And it was interesting. That interaction with my staff was always a little bit fraught. Like, folks would be like, "Well, I stand by this person. Like Wade, are you just gonna make the hiring decision? If so, like you just... If you don't wanna hire him, don't hire him." And it sort of would be like-- And I'd kind of be like, "Well, that's not really what I want, right? Like I want you to make the decision. I'm just trying to like give you some guidance here, and I want you to sort of be able to, you know-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- WFWade Foster
... reason through this problem. And if you've answered it, like if you have confidence that you have s- you know, efficiently answered it, then I will back you. Let's go hire this person. But if you haven't, then I want you to like take this into account and go figure out like, you know, is there more information you need to get or do you need to adjust your course, et cetera." But that's not often how it would play out. It would just sort of play out as like, "Well, does Wade want me to hire this person or does Wade not want me to hire this person?"
- SPShaan Puri
Right.
- WFWade Foster
And I would, and I'm like, "Ugh," like ugh. So anyway, that's kind of what was happening pre-AI. Post-AI, I'd run the war council or like my hiring committee over these folks, and then I would notice like it's just more articulate than me. It could sort of say, "Hey, I noticed that, you know, this person has these traits and the panel did not scrutinize this. So you need to go scrutinize this." And it would s- you know, give like a score of like here, compared to everyone you've hired at Zapier, here's how, here's how likely I think they're gonna be successful or not.
- SPShaan Puri
Hmm.
- WFWade Foster
And so now I could take that to the hiring panel and say like, "Hey, the, the AI said this. I agree. Like what are, what, what's going on here?" And I noticed all of a sudden the behavior shift, where people would go like, "Oh, interesting. I think the AI did get this and this right, but I think it's wrong on this, and here's why. Because I have this other context that it doesn't have." And I'm like, "Great. That's all I was wanting to know." It's like I want, like what else, what else am I missing? What am I not seeing here? And I just found that like bec- maybe because it's not, maybe because it feels like arguing with an AI is easier than arguing with the CEO-
- SPShaan Puri
Right
- WFWade Foster
... or maybe because it's more eloquent and it like actually has a way of talking that makes it like easier to address the specific points. I'm not exactly sure, but I did notice the way we made decisions around hiring got better, in part because we added the, the AI to the loop.
- SPSam Parr
I don't know if you guys were ever like believers in some of these personality tests. Like there's this thing called Culture Amp, I think it's called, where it's like a software where you do personality tests before you hire someone. Ray Dalio has his version of it, whatever. And there's like, tends to be, it's like a scale p- where people fall in where they're like, "I don't believe in anything involving like personality tests." I've noticed with AI I've fallen closer to the side of like I follow what it says, because I've done some of these personality tests and I've used it to train my AI and it's helped me a lot. But when it comes to hiring, do you guys buy into this at all when it comes to, um, personality tests and like figuring out if a person could be good for the job? Because that makes, with AI, it makes the process so much easier.
- WFWade Foster
Hmm. What do you think, Shaan?
- SPShaan Puri
[clears throat] I, I go the, the other way, meaning it's not really about personality tests per se, but I find that, you know like with self-driving, one approach was let's put all the sensors on the car. Let's get cameras. Let's just get more cameras. Let's get LIDAR. Let's get radar. Let's get sonar. Let's, you know, put a, uh, what else do we do? Get a taste test. What, what, what are all the different possible sensors you could put on the car? And the Tesla approach was basically like it needs vision and it, it needs eyes only. And one of the reasons why people thought it was for cost, which was I think a factor that like LIDAR was very, very expensive, so it was not practical in the long term. But the s- the reason that Elon says that he did it was because when you have too, too many sensors, you get too much conflicting data and you don't know which one to trust. It makes it more faulty, more error-prone. And actually, what you should do is take only the minimum number of sensors needed, but then train the, train the hell out of them. That's kind of my approach to hiring, where I now simplify. I need less time to h- to spend with somebody, and I look for fewer things and, but those have to be home runs, otherwise I'm just not gonna hire the person. So what do I mean by that?
- WFWade Foster
But that doesn't a- yeah, yeah. Answer the question though. Like, how do you get... Okay, what you're saying is, instead of looking at, like, hundreds of questions, you're looking at three questions.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- WFWade Foster
Are you good at this, this, and this? Okay, so how do you gather that information?
- SPShaan Puri
So again, stealing from Elon, he, he talks about th- you want evidence of exceptional ability. So all I'm looking for, I'm not looking for, like, the, the fir- first filter is just evidence of exceptional ability. So I'm not trying to assess culture fit right now. I'm not asking do I like them. I'm not asking, like, do they have the relevant experience. All I wanna know is have you done some exceptional shit before, and then tell me that story. And in that story, I'm gonna try to understand, did you do it, or were you on a team of people doing it, or were you riding somebody else's coattails doing that, that thing? And if you really haven't done anything exceptional, the odds of this being the place where you have the, the final, you know, the first exceptional thing of your career is not really a bet I'm excited to go take. And so that's the very first filter that I'm looking for, and that's not personality test driven. Then after that is a kind of personality test of, like, do I try to do something with them where I get the, uh, you know, gut, gut feel of, like, do we have creative chemistry? Do I feel like this person is good to have in the room when I'm trying to figure something out? Or do I feel like they don't, they're not, they're not elevating that conversation when that happens? And so I'm really just kind of like a two-step filter, and that's it, and that's all I want as signal. But I'll, obviously, like, I'm not running the size of org that way it is, and I'm, I'm us- I'm working with people who are working directly with me in a s- very, very small team where everybody has to be, you know, 10X or better, otherwise it's just not worth having them on the team.
- WFWade Foster
Hmm.
- SPShaan Puri
And so that's the... I've learned that kind of the hard way because I used to do it very differently.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah. We, so we've done some work with this. So, like, we've done, like, Myers-Briggs type stuff internally at times. We've done, there's this one called Birkman that we've done at times. I have found it to be moderately useful. I have a CEO buddy who runs this public company in Colombia that does DiSC profiles for every hire, and he's, like, insistent, where it's like, "If I have an accountant, they need to be this profile," da, da, da, da.
- SPShaan Puri
[chuckles]
- WFWade Foster
And it's like if they're not, they're not gonna be a good fit on the team. I've not gone that far. I think what I, where I net out is that y- I mean, you do need somebody who is exceptional, first and foremost. Like, everybody's got a personality type, but it doesn't tell you if you're good or not. Like, you, you know, you, you can score whatever you're gonna score, but you still need to be good.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah.
- WFWade Foster
But I do think that, like, teams matter. Like, and when I look at my, my personality or my way of working, there are things where I am exceptionally good at, and there are certain defaults that I have where I know that if I am partnered up with somebody who has, like, a complimentary traits, I'm gonna be way better 'cause they're gonna have my backside in places that... I, I don't know if, like, there's any science behind this, but if you look at my EA versus my, like, Myers-Briggs, she has three different letters than I do. So there's four letters in that, and three of 'em, of hers are different. And she does, like, have... She, like, likes doing things that I don't like doing, and she's good at those things that I don't like doing, and it ends up being, like, pretty helpful because I think it's kind of like in sports where it's like, you know, if you basketball team, it's like, well, you need somebody that's gonna, you know, Michael Jordan's gonna shoot all the shots. Well, you need Dennis Rodman, who's gonna, like, lock down D and grab boards.
- SPShaan Puri
But are you doing that for when you guys are hiring?
- WFWade Foster
We don't do it, no. We don't actually have people, like, take a test and say, like, "Hey, what are, what are you going to do?" Different hiring managers are probably doing it somewhat, like, by, like, organically. Um, but it is not a science for us.
- SPShaan Puri
I have a, I have an idea for how I think companies could use AI to improve their hiring. I don't know if this is, like, fully, like, l- legal. I don't know if you could do this exactly the way I'm d- gonna describe it, but here, here's the exercise.
- WFWade Foster
I'm in.
- SPShaan Puri
You, you go through your team. So you have all the p- all the past hires you've, you've made in the last, let's call it three years. And you could stack rank who's exceptional, who's acceptable, and who's kind of like been a source of kind of hit-or-miss performance, uh, let's say. Cool. So you could stack rank employees i- in your team, and you could say, "Great." You also have maybe the, the transcripts or the m- the recordings of all the interviews that they did, right? So you have this historical pattern, um, that you, that you have with all of them, and then you have new people that are coming in and, like, so 'cause when I was at, uh, Twitch, they used the Amazon bar raiser thing that you described, and they're trying to do, like, the human version of this. It's like here's this guy who's seen a thousand interview panels who will come in and kind of like standardize the hi- the hiring process but also, like, provide the most experienced voice on hiring, and then they're kind of checking this candidate against this pattern of past candidates as well as against your values and, you know, the, the, the role, the role in mind. And I just think AI's gonna be way better at that than people. I think it's gonna be, like, dramatically better at that, and I'm surprised that people aren't using, like, kind of the training data of your existing team to inform the next hire. Do you think it would work? Like, I, I don't know for sure if the, if AI would be good at that, but I, I kind of think that would, that would be helpful.
- 48:15 – 51:17
being a billionaire before 40
- WFWade Foster
you.
- SPSam Parr
Can I switch gears for a second? How old are you?
- WFWade Foster
I turn 40 this year.
- SPSam Parr
Okay. So you were, if $5 billion is your value, you were in the ballpark of being a under 40 billionaire, give or take. Does that feel strange? Because you seem like a guy who does not particularly, even though I was teasing you, you seem like a guy who doesn't particularly care about money or success other than having a good time.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] I mean, it, the, it feels- Honestly, it feels a little fictional to even hear you say that, where I'm like, I don't, I don't think of myself, like, that way. And I... And it, and it, it sort of is, like, so much is, like, tied to, like, the paper, the paper worth of Zapier at any given moment in time. It's like the voting machine. Like, I don't have liquid dollars that look like that. You know, I, I have some amount that's liquid.
- SPShaan Puri
Describe, describe your psychology around money. So how do you think about it? How, how do you use it in a way that improves the quality of your life? How do you avoid it so that it doesn't mess up certain parts of your life? G- g- make us a little smarter. Just share your perspective.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah. I think, look, it's... A lot of this stuff is, like, highly personal and, like, what do you care about in life? And for me, the n- like, things one, two, and three are my family. And so, you know, I wanna be around my family, have, like, you know, provide for them, you know, make sure that they sort of are able to sort of live a good life by whatever definition I have of that. And truthfully, like, once you get to, like, a certain amount of wealth, like, more wealth doesn't change that equation.
- SPShaan Puri
What, what do you think that level is?
- WFWade Foster
I mean, shoot, if you come live in central Missouri, it's not that much. [laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- WFWade Foster
You know, I think you could do just fine with, like, a, a million bucks, and, you know, d- do quite well. I mean, shoot, when I, I, when I was... I remember when I just got out of college, my, my dream was if I could only make $100,000 a year. That was my dream. It was like, if I could make $100,000 a year, I, I was like, "Man, I'll be set."
- SPSam Parr
That was mine too, by the way. It was-
- WFWade Foster
Yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
It, it was like, if I can get out and work at KPMG and get 60 grand, I c- might get to 100 grand before I'm 30, and then I am set, baby.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
That, that was the goal.
- WFWade Foster
And I, I don't know. Like, p- partly that's, you know, I don't have, like, a lot of vices. I don't have, like, a lot of expensive hobbies and things like that.
- SPShaan Puri
Do, do you do anything cool with your money?
- WFWade Foster
Uh, you know, when I go to a restaurant, I don't look at the, how much the items cost.
- SPShaan Puri
Nice.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] Like, that kind of stuff.
- SPSam Parr
And so you've raised money, so you have to have some type of likely, presumably you're gonna h- you want to have some type of exit event, whether that's IPO or, um, selling the whole thing. Is there anything that you have on your bucket list that you'd wanna, like, if you're like, "Okay, if I get over a billion dollars liquid, I wanna change this about my life," or there's something interesting I wanna do?
- WFWade Foster
No, there's th- like, n- nothing that I couldn't already do. You know, like, I, I remember my grandpa, like, his dream was always to go on a safari, and he never got to go on one. I always thought, like, that was an incredible thing. And so when my girls are old enough, I'm like, "Let's go on a safari." But I, I do that now. I don't need billions of dollars to go on a safari. [laughs]
- 51:17 – 54:36
a case for not having a chip on your shoulder
- SPSam Parr
The reason I like asking you about this stuff is because you are very well-rounded, and you seem like... We had this, like, joke called, like, the total man. It was, like, like, like a buddy of ours or a podcast guest who was, like, kind of like the perfect package. Like, they were, like, ruthless when they needed to be ruthless. They were sweet when they needed to be sweet. They were smart when they needed to be smart, but they were still a good hang.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And like I said, like, Dharmesh has that, and you definitely have that too. So I like hearing your opinion on topics where most of the people, ourselves or myself included, talk about it from a, they're broken, they have a chip on their shoulder perspective, whereas I don't think you have that. You have a, you have a far more wholesome and, um, a positive outlook when it comes to a lot of this stuff. So that's why I like hearing you talk about some things where you don't typically hear an emotionally healthy person give their perspective on.
- WFWade Foster
I, you know, I was really lucky. Like, I grew up, you know, with a, like a, you know, a, a family that was all sort of like, you know, my, my parents were married, my t- two grandparents that were married. I have, like, aunts and uncles and cousins that were all sort of just, like, really tight-knit. But if I was to, like, give a shout-out to any of those, like, I, I, I gotta talk about my grandad. Like, you know, my grandad is a World War II vet, but you know what? I, I, I didn't know him as that. I just knew him as this guy, you know, who w- like, always had time for his grandkids. He died, he was 98 and a half, and he basically liv- lived by himself the entire time I knew him. He drove himself up until two weeks before he died. He walked three miles a day every single day un- two, until two weeks before he died. He did The New York Times crossword puzzle in pen every single day. And I remember going to, you know, a- after he died, we were at the, um, the funeral home, and they were trying to, like, plan out all this stuff. And, you know, most 98-year-olds when they die, it's like they don't got any friends. There's nobody gonna be there because everybody who's, e- everybody who would've been there has already died. You're 98. Like, they just, you just made it a long time. And I remember the staff saying, like, "Okay," like, you know, "we'll probably just do, like, a reci- you know, the, the receiving line or whatever will be, y- you know, like, we'll just do, like, 30 minutes or an hour or whatnot." And that receiving line is there for three hours, people just, like, coming through nonstop and, you know, just m- members from every single walk of life. Like, he had, you know, when he was a teacher, he had all these teachers that were coming through that remembered him. He was, like, big with the D.A.R.E program, so, like, all these highway patrolmen coming through, all these members of the church coming through, all his extended family coming through. And I remember that, like, standing out a lot to me, where it was like, here's a guy who, you know, was, was great at family and great at professional stuff. And I just... That, that to me was, like, just a really good example of, you know, someone who got their, like, priorities double, like, like, dialed in really, really well. You know, he didn't have it all, but he didn't need it all. It's like the things he cared about, he, he, he nailed them. And so to me, that's always, like, stood out as, like, what, what a good life looks like.
- SPSam Parr
Sounds like a good role model. I think that you definitely seem to embody that, where like, like I said, you are great at business and also, like, don't have this jackass side that most people who are where you are seem to have.
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Right, Shaan?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, yeah. [laughs] We, um... Uh, first, I love that story that you just told. That was actually, like, a really awesome, an awesome story. And also, you know,
- 54:36 – 1:00:55
1-dimensional winners
- SPShaan Puri
I think that the value of what you just said... You said two things that stood out to me. You said he didn't have it all, but he didn't need it all. And I think that, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, which is that you're, you're really only as As rich is what you don't need. You know, basically, like, if you don't f- and that, that's whether that's material things or other, right? If you don't need the approval or, or attention of others, you're free. You're rich, you know, because you just don't need that. It's not one of the things that you have to go pay the cost to go get.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
Um, right? Like, you know, you don't have to go be s- super flashy on social media because you just don't care for it. Um, and so I think that's, like, such an underrated attribute. And when you said that, it kind of reminded me, it sounds like your grand- your grandpa had that kind of, that way of life.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And the other was, you know, des- defining what winning is. So it's like if winning is just in the work domain, or winning is just in one, you know, just in, in, in, in one of... If it, you have to kind of decide what it is for you, and it sounds like pretty early on you got clear on that. And the, the clearer you are, the less likely you are to be blown around with the wind. You know, if the media portrays Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or whoever as like the titans, and then you say, "Oh, I guess that's what winning is," and then you're, you know, soon enough on your, you know, multiple divorces and your kids don't like you, whatever, whatever. You can go... It's easy to go down a certain path if you didn't have, like, a really grounded belief system around what winning is.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
And have examples of people who have won that way, because you'll get a lot of examples of what, what I call 1-dimensional winners. Michael Jordan. You know, this, the, the ultimate... I'm a basketball fan, so I grew up being like, "Jordan is the GOAT. He's the greatest. He's the best." And he is when it comes to basketball, but he also had many things in his personal life that I don't want to emulate.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPShaan Puri
And so as much as I wanted to be like Mike on the court, I did not wanna be like Mike off the court. I think it's worth the time to do what it sounds like you've done, which is kind of like find, find whatever that North Star is for you so that you kind of have a clear picture in your head. It, it, it makes all future decisions really easy.
- WFWade Foster
Totally. I love that. Like, you know, define your own definition of winning. And, you know, if you do that well, like, some of your decisions might look odd to others. They'll be like, "Why, why are you doing that that way? You could do this. You could do that the other." But you'll be a lot happier when you're just like, "This is what I wanna be doing." And, you know, if what you wanna be doing is, you know, running a software company and, you know, great. Go do that. If what you wanna do is, you know, be a teacher and, you know, help students, do that. Like, if what you wanna do is, you know, I don't know, live on the coast or live in the... It's like, what, what is it that sort of, like, is winning for you?
- SPSam Parr
Do you have any examples of that? I mean, you are very successful, and you moved from San Francisco back to Jeff City, so that's, like, an obvious one.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPSam Parr
But, like, are there any other, like, strange Zapier or Wade decisions that you've made that you think that the normal Silicon Valley guy would be like, "That's insane. I wouldn't do it that way"?
- WFWade Foster
I mean, like, I mean, the sort of remote work story is one, where we've just never had an office way before anyone thought that that was normal. Yeah, we only raised the one round of money. Like, that was, like, pretty odd at the time. Like, you know, we're, we're building this business for, like, the long haul, and so, you know, I constantly get questioned around, like, "Well, what about..." I mean, heck, you guys are asking me about it. It's like, "Well, what about the exit? Or what's the valuation? Or what's the..." And I'm like, "It'll be what it will be." Like, we're here to grow it for our customers. Like, that's the thing I care about, not these other things. And, you know, I think if we do a good job of that, then sure, the numbers will follow, but that's not the point. Like, the point is, like, the, the, the work itself. And I think that's, you find that with anyone who loves what they do. You know, you ask them... I, this is where I think, feel like the media gets a lot of this, like, narrative around billionaires wrong is they're like, you know, they're, they're hoarding their money, they're doing all this other stuff. I mean, look, I don't know all billionaires, but I've, I've gotten to meet a couple, and, you know, Dharmesh, Halligan, like, you know, g- guys like this who, I don't know, they genuinely just seem like they like what they're doing, and, like, they're gonna keep doing that whether or not they make, you know, a little bit of money or a lot of money.
- SPShaan Puri
The, the test has played out.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
They did it before they were making any money and kept going when there was no clear line of sight to money.
- WFWade Foster
Exactly.
- SPShaan Puri
Then when they made the money, they kept doing it.
- WFWade Foster
They kept doing it.
- SPShaan Puri
So [laughs] clearly it wasn't about the money, 'cause-
- WFWade Foster
I just like doing it.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. [laughs]
- WFWade Foster
I think athletes are the same way. Like, you look at, like, Olympic athletes. Olympic athletes don't make a lot of money, but they just love doing it, and they're just gonna keep doing it no matter what. You see it in, you know, professional sports where, like, guys are, you know, at the tail end of their career and they probably should be retiring, but they keep playing 'cause they just love playing, and they'll take the, they'll take the lesser contract. They'll do all this other stuff because it's like, "I just can't. I just love this game. Like, I love doing that thing."
- SPSam Parr
So Shaan, listen to this. One time, I think in 2000 and, maybe 2019, Wade spoke at Hustle Con in Oakland, California. And this was right, I think, before you raised your round. I, I think. Or, but you were, you guys were the hottest thing going, and you came and talked, and I thought it was awesome. And I don't know if you remember this, Wade, but you and I sat backstage for like 10 hours.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And all the speakers would come and go, and they would have to pass through this room, and I think, I don't re- I don't, I don't know exactly if this is how you felt. I think you did the same thing I wanted to do, which is, like, these people would come in, and we would just stare and, like, observe how they were behaving 'cause it was kind of fun to have, like, you know, billionaires or, like, these bigshot CEOs just, like, interacting with you, having a normal conversation. It was really exciting. It was like people watching on steroids, and we were just, we're kind of staring at them. But I remember you sat with me, I don't know if you remember this, for, like, it was, like, eight or 10 hours. It was, like, the entire day.
- WFWade Foster
[laughs]
- SPSam Parr
And I was like, "Do you got somewhere to be?" And you were like, "Nope, I just like being here." And I remember that, you, you doing that, and it seems like you haven't changed, where it was like you were very, you were successful then. Now you're incredibly successful, but it was a very similar personality where you're still very curious.
- WFWade Foster
Yeah. I, I don't remember it being eight or 10 hours, but I do [laughs] remember, like-
- 1:00:55 – 1:06:55
recommended reading
- SPSam Parr
What do you, what do you listen to and what do you consume on a regular basis? Books-
- WFWade Foster
Well, my, I mean-
- SPSam Parr
... uh, podcasts, whatever
- WFWade Foster
... my favorite podcast, I gotta give a shout-out to the Acquired guys. Like, I, I mean, it's just 10 out of 10. Like, you know, mo- most of those things they do a deep dive on are just these legendary entrepreneurs who have like, you know, did it for decades.
- SPShaan Puri
Leave us a, l- leave us with a recommendation. Give us a Acquired episode we should listen to and maybe a book that you liked.
- WFWade Foster
Well, the NFL episode if you like sports at all. Like, y- you know, that is a good entryway into Acquired. Though probably my favorite series is all the retail ones. So there's like a, like a Co- like I think it's Costco, Walmart, and Amazon. And there's sort of like-
- SPShaan Puri
Trader Joe's
- WFWade Foster
... a trifecta right in there that are like all really, really good. As for a book, um, I, I recently finished this book Make Something Wonderful. It's a Steve Jobs, like in his own words. It's a really good one. You know, I think Steve Jobs, he sort of, he has like a larger than life reputation. This book is literally just emails, speeches, literally just like his own, his own thinking, and it's sort of organized roughly cr- cr- chronologically. And so you get to kind of just see his progression of like, you know, V1 Apple, the Pixar years, V2 Apple, and you kind of just see how he, he changes sort of like over time.
- SPSam Parr
Shaan, do you have a g- a book that you read recently you wanna recommend?
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah. Um, there's a book called The Score. Have I talked about that here? C. Thi Nguyen is the, the, the guy's name on the cover. But it's called The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game, and this is a guy who, like the fundamental premise of the book is amazing. He's, so he's talking about like the power of a game. So he's like i- imagine a game, um, y- let's say we take, uh, Pictionary. We open up a game of Pictionary. Games are this incredible thing 'cause they tell you what winning means, so they tell you the rules, what you're allowed to do. They tell you the, the scoreboard, so like how you gain, how you win in this game and, and like what your goal should be. So they dictate your goals, they dictate your behavior, and then they s- also sort of dictate who you need to be to be good at this game. And he's like, let's take a game like Charades. To be great at Charades, you're gonna have to be loose, you're gonna have to be highly communicative, you're gonna have to be a great team player, whether you're the guesser or you're the, the actor, doesn't matter. But then let's say you play Risk. It's like you're gonna have to be like ruthless, dominating, you're gonna... And so like, he's like, "It's amazing if you just take the idea of a game, how it will change your behavior," and he's like, basically extends that to like the games-
- SPSam Parr
Oh, that's cool
- SPShaan Puri
... we play in life. And so he de- he describes like when he was this professor. He's like, "I got into teaching philosophy 'cause I love philosophy. That, of course, that's why... Who else becomes a philosophy teacher?" He's like, "But then I discovered this leaderboard, and it was like all the philosophy professors in the country." And he's like, "Suddenly I started, well, how do you get on that board, right? I don't wanna be not on the board." And so he k- kind of innocently, he's like, "Oh, you gotta get published." And he's like, "Well, then I realized like the way to get published the most and the fastest is in these obscure publications about these types of things." He's like, "Suddenly, a few years in, I hate what I'm doing." He's like, "Why am I even doing this? Like, I'm doing studies about shit that I don't even care about to get published to get on a leaderboard that doesn't even matter. Why? Because I play games. We all play games." And so you have to be really careful about like games and the different types of ways you play. There's like striving play, which is like you play for the joy of playing, versus like outcome-based, where you're playing to win. And like, you know, you wanna be a striver for these reasons, and that c- strivers actually tend to win more too, but they didn't play for that reason. And like you can't just say, "Well, I'm not gonna play any game 'cause like it's no fun." Let's say we're playing Charades, and if you don't care at all about winning, we're not gonna have a good time. Like the trick is to care about it in the moment and then completely let it go afterwards when you remember that, oh, the reason we're playing Charades is so that we could have a fun time as a group hanging out, not so that I got the most points in the game. And so, you know, there's all this like nuance around-
- SPSam Parr
That's pretty good
- SPShaan Puri
... games, and I, and I think like, 'cause I think the biggest decision you make in life is what game you're deciding to play, and how that will shape the, the next 10 years of your behavior.
- SPSam Parr
Looks like it just came out too. The book came out like six months ago.
- SPShaan Puri
Yeah, so I'm d- I'm digging that book right now.
- SPSam Parr
I just finished. I'll, I'll wrap it up with this one. Wade, you might like this one. I, I think you, if I had to guess... Did you listen to Blink-182 as a kid?
- WFWade Foster
[laughs] I, I did.
- SPSam Parr
Did you, Shaan?
- SPShaan Puri
[laughs] I mean, who didn't? They, those are the popular songs.
- SPSam Parr
Yeah.
- SPShaan Puri
I mean, I wasn't like going to the concerts.
- WFWade Foster
Millennial like, yeah. [laughs]
- SPSam Parr
Uh, I read the biography of, the memoir of Mark Hoppus, who is one of the lead singers of Blink-182. Such a good book. I read it in three days. I couldn't put it down. It was one of these books where like I had to force myself to put it down when I was going to bed at night 'cause I was like, staying up too late.
- SPShaan Puri
Dude, why, why are m- musician biographies so good?
- SPSam Parr
They're so, I'm desperate for more.
- SPShaan Puri
Like the, like the memoirs or whatever of musicians and comedians, it's like-
- SPSam Parr
What else do you have?
- SPShaan Puri
This Red Hot Chili Peppers guy, Anthony Kiedis.
- SPSam Parr
Was that good?
Episode duration: 1:06:55
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Transcript of episode TVpLs0F1zpA
