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.

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INSIGHT

Build Proofs But Prefer Polished SaaS For Core Tools

Building internal AI tools can be cheap for prototyping, but maintenance and polish make commercial SaaS worth buying.
Wade's CPTO built a meeting recorder as a vibe-coding proof of concept but Zapier kept the paid subscriptions.

INSIGHT

Software Is Small Compared To Headcount

Software spend is still a tiny fraction of business costs compared to headcount, so buying polished SaaS often outweighs internal build-for-cheap.
Wade notes enterprise software is minimal relative to payroll and maintenance burdens shift incentives toward vendors.

ANECDOTE

War Council Uses Subagents To Debate Decisions

Wade uses an internal Claude skill called War Council that spins up subagents with personas to debate decisions and synthesize recommendations.
The War Council creates static personas (ruthless CFO, wartime operator) and dynamic experts per question then summarizes with a master agent.

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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.