Zapier is using AI to sell to AI

Mar 3, 2026

Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, leads product and automation at scale. He explains how AI agents are now picking products, what makes agents choose (fast pages, plain-text docs, agent-friendly content), and how Zapier builds internal AI tools like War Council to spin up subagents, analyze hiring and sales, and scale AI workflows across the company.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Market To AI Agents Not Just Humans

AI agents will choose products on behalf of humans, so marketing must target agents not people.
Wade Foster says agents prefer plain, fast, mechanical docs and separate agent-focused pages to increase recommendation likelihood.

ADVICE

Create Fast Plain Text Pages For Agents

Do create agent-specific pages with plain text, very fast load times, and mechanical descriptions so models parse your offering accurately.
Wade recommends clean documentation and explicit structure because agents ignore visual design and favor clear facts.

ADVICE

Continuously Test Agent Recommendations

Test agent recommendations by running many queries, having peers reproduce queries, and using automated evals to track when models mention your product.
Wade emphasizes heavy experimentation and trial-and-error to learn what triggers model recommendations.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Presented by Zapier
https://zapier.com/

Episode Highlights / Timestamps
00:00 Marketing to agents, not humans
00:45 What “agent marketing” actually means
01:30 How agents decide which products to pick
02:15 What works: clean docs, fast pages, agent-friendly content
03:54 How people are testing and tracking agent recommendations
04:48 Is SaaS dead?
04:57 Zapier’s CPTO vibe-codes a meeting recorder
05:24 Why they still won’t cancel SaaS subscriptions
06:27 When vibe coding is worth it (and when it isn’t)
06:45 Software spend vs headcount spend
07:57 The “War Council” Claude skill
08:33 How it spins up subagents + personas
09:54 How Wade built it fast using Cursor + Granola notes
11:06 Skills as a commodity vs software as a business
12:54 Using War Council for hiring decisions
14:51 Using it to analyze sales performance + feedback
16:21 Wade’s Cursor setup + switching between models
17:42 Using Codex to critique Claude when it gets stuck
18:09 How Wade structures personal context files
21:18 Building an AI chief-of-staff system
22:03 Using Zapier MCP to draft emails / run actions
24:09 Getting 800 people at Zapier using Cursor / Claude Code / Codex
25:39 Example: AI reviewing 4 massive spreadsheets fast
31:03 The “NO” hat and staying focused
32:06 Wrap

📄 War Council Skill (Claude Skill mentioned in the episode):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CU674IKmPCAZm2xuqMGklTA-Bq1xr1GNQW6hNydxXrE/edit?tab=t.0

Are you marketing to humans… or to agents?

In this episode of The Next New Thing, Andrew Warner sits down with Wade Foster to unpack a shift that’s already starting to change how companies grow:

AI agents are beginning to choose products on behalf of humans.

That means you may no longer be “selling to a person.” You’re trying to get ChatGPT, Claude, and other models to recommend you instead of a competitor — and the tactics are different. Wade explains what “agent marketing” actually means, what agents care about (and what they ignore), and why teams are already building tools to measure how models mention their brand.

They also tackle a question every founder is asking:

Is SaaS dead?

Wade shares an example from inside Zapier: their CPTO vibe-coded a meeting recording tool internally. It worked as a proof of concept — but they’re not canceling their SaaS subscriptions. Wade breaks down why building is cheaper than ever, but maintenance, polish, and focus are still what make commercial software worth paying for.

Then the conversation gets tactical: Wade shows how he’s using AI daily as a “second brain” inside Cursor — including a Claude skill he calls The War Council, which spins up sub-agents (ruthless CFO, wartime operator, hiring expert, design visionary, etc.) to debate decisions and return a synthesized recommendation.

This is a real look at how AI-native leadership works inside an 800-person company — without hype.