Wade Foster is the CEO of Zapier, a company that sits between 7,000+ apps and runs millions of automations every single day. That gives him a front-row seat to how companies are actually adopting AI, not just talking about it.
In this episode, Wade breaks down the exact decisions he made at Zapier to go from 10% AI usage to 97% company-wide, why agents and workflows are not the same thing, and what most leaders are getting completely wrong about AI fluency.
What you'll learn:
The difference between agents and workflows (and when to use which)
What triggered Zapier's internal "Code Red" after GPT-4 launched
The one-week hackathon that took AI adoption from 10% to 50% overnight
The AI fluency rubric Zapier built: Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative
Why leaders who aren't using AI are the biggest bottleneck in their companies
How to measure AI ROI: floor raisers vs ceiling raisers
How AI now handles 50% of Zapier's customer support tickets
Wade's personal "advisory council" of AI sub-agents he uses for every major decision
Why building a company today is 10x cheaper but distribution is 10x harder
The truth about fundraising: you're selling your company, not raising money
How Zapier stayed profitable by only hiring when it hurt
Guest: Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/
Company - Zapier: https://zapier.com
Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
Newsletter: https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com
Episode highlights
0:00 - Intro
1:13 - The Seinfeld Quote & Kanye Text story
3:16 - Workflows vs. Agents: What's the difference?
6:09 - Zapier's Code Red moment
8:55 - The hackathon that moved AI adoption from 10% to 50%
12:06 - Making AI fluency a hiring requirement
13:47 - Building the AI fluency rubric
16:40 - Why leaders are the biggest AI bottleneck
18:12 - Revenue impact of going AI-first
22:09 - Would Wade build Zapier differently today?
23:20 - Is Zapier's moat at risk from agents?
24:59 - Staying profitable with minimal capital
28:37 - The riskiest contrarian bet that paid off
31:52 - Wade's 3 personal AI workflows
36:53 - Favorite books for founders
GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing go-to-market insights from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by 350+ of the best GTM executives.
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