How One Hackathon Took Zapier’s AI Usage From 10% to 97% | CEO of Zapier

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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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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