2011
Wade Foster says Stripe and Twilio both launched in 2011, the year Zapier began.
“So this is 2011, SaaS is on the rise. This is the year that Stripe launched, Twilio launched things like that.”
Topic
Zapier
43 facts from 4 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2011
Zapier's founders built their first prototype over a weekend at a local Startup Weekend hackathon, working with Mike.
“we've got this local hackathon coming up, startup weekend. We go, we team up with Mike, we hold up into, like, a like a garage in the back of this building all weekend.”
2011
The Zapier prototype demoed well and won the hackathon.
“came out and had a prototype. It worked, it demoed well, uh, so ended up winning the hackathon.”
2011
The Zapier founders initially worked on the product on nights and weekends while keeping their day jobs.
“We're having fun. So we said, we'll do it nights and weekends, kept our day jobs”
2011
Zapier's first customer was Andrew Warner, who ran a podcast, after Wade Foster emailed him about a PayPal and Highrise integration he was seeking.
“I remember the first customer we had, guy Andrew Warner. I'd emailed him, he ran a podcast”
2011
Wade Foster says he quit his day job in January, about a month after the first customer's reaction in early December.
“It was like early December that this happened, and, uh, by January, I'd quit the day job”
2023
Zapier paused normal work for a week and held a company-wide AI hackathon that included non-engineers.
“We paused the company for an entire week and ran a hackathon. Didn't matter if you were in engineering or not.”
2023
After Zapier's AI hackathon week, daily AI use at the company rose from about 10% of employees to over 50%, according to Wade Foster.
“And at the end of that week, we went from about 10% of people using AI as part of their daily job to over 50%.”
2023
Wade Foster says that within about a year of ChatGPT launching, nearly all Zapier employees were using AI daily.
“we got within a year or so, basically of ChatGPT launching, almost like 100% of the employee base is using AI day to day.”
2024
By September 2024, about 400,000 Zapier customers had used the platform to delegate more than 100 million tasks to AI, according to the host.
“When I last spoke to Wade in September of 2024, some 400,000 customers had already used Zapier to delegate more than 100 million tasks to AI.”
2026
Wade Foster says the newest top model scores about 40% on Zapier's AutomationBench, the highest result on that benchmark.
“It performs about 40% of the tasks accurately, which is the highest that there is.”
2026
Wade Foster says Zapier's AutomationBench contains roughly 600 tasks resembling normal knowledge-work workflows across disciplines such as marketing, sales, HR and operations.
“So we have probably 600 tasks that are of that variety that describe like a normal knowledge work workflowy task”
2026
Wade Foster says about 80% of what Zapier customers use AI agents for would be better done with deterministic code.
“the vast majority of what people are using an agent for 80% in fact, they probably should be using actually old-fashioned deterministic code.”
2026
Wade Foster says building workflows with no-code boxes feels antiquated and that AI now does the building, summing it up as 'no code is code'.
“the idea of building a no code, it feels antiquated to me. It's like the new code no code is code.”
2026
Zapier's automated support email program runs five independent AI agents to evaluate each troubleshooting case, according to Wade Foster.
“it spins up five agents, independent agents that evaluate the troubleshooting situation.”
2026
Wade Foster says he began a weekly AI review of his activity at the start of the year, and it has produced new tools that automate parts of his job.
“I started doing this workflow at the beginning of the year, and pretty much every week now, I have new tools, new systems that start to automate bits and pieces of my job.”
2026
Many Zapier employees run a weekly automation that gathers signals from their work across apps and suggests tools to build.
“they'll just have an automation that runs once a week and it just kind of collects all these signals across all the work they've done.”
2026
Wade Foster says it is very likely Zapier will offer its weekly activity-review automation to customers as a product.
“Yes, I think it's very likely that'll come in some form factor.”
2026
Wade Foster put Zapier's then chief people officer, Brandon, in charge of AI transformation because his team was already strong at job redesign, compensation and reskilling.
“it turned out Brandon, our chief people officer at the time, was, like, really good at doing a lot of these things.”
2026
Zapier's executive team started a friendly competition to see who could put the most communications in public channels, which grew into a company-wide encouragement.
“one of the things we started to do on our executive team was we just had a little fun competition to see, hey, who can put most of their communications in sort of a public channel.”
2026
Host Nathan said Wade Foster had tweeted that some Zapier engineers were spending about $30,000 a month on AI tokens.
“I saw you tweet not too long ago that you have some engineers spending $30,000 a month on tokens at Zapier”
2026
Wade Foster describes Zapier as an organization of almost 800 people.
“when you have a almost 800 person organization, you're there's just a big education effort.”
2026
Wade Foster expects companies, including Zapier, to eventually assign AI token budgets to individual employees.
“I do suspect that token budgets are gonna be a real thing, though.”
2026
Zapier's guidelines for AI-assisted communication say employees must own what they send and spend more time authoring it than the reader spends reading it.
“you need to own what you sent. If you wrote it, you probably should be putting more time into authoring the thing than the reader is reading it.”
2026
Wade Foster says that because employees now do their own basic data analysis with AI, Zapier needs fewer data analysts, who work on higher-value problems.
“Similarly, data analysts, everyone inside of Zapier is kind of their own mini data analyst now, and so you don't need, quote unquote, as many data analysts.”
Undated
Zapier surveyed enterprises on whether they could switch away from their AI provider.
“Zapier just did a survey of talking to people, talking to enterprises about whether or not they feel like they could switch off their AI provider.”
Undated
In the Zapier survey, about 85-86% of enterprises thought they could switch AI providers, but only about 30% succeeded when they tried.
“Something like eighty five, 86% of them thought they could, but when they actually tried to do it, only about 30% of them could actually pull it off.”
Undated
MCP stands for model context protocol, which Wade Foster describes as a way for agents to talk to other agents and tools.
“now there's this new thing, uh, MCP, you called it stands for model context protocol, but effectively it's just a way for agents to talk to other agents.”
Undated
Zapier's business model is a subscription combined with usage-based credits.
“Yeah, I mean, for Zapier, it's pretty simple. It's a subscription with usage-based credits associated with it.”
Undated
Rana El Kaliouby says that when her firm couldn't find a PitchBook MCP on Zapier, PitchBook told them to use its own MCP directly.
“We couldn't find their MCP on Zapier, so we asked Pitchbook and they were like, No, no, no, you can just like use our MCP directly.”
Undated
Zapier converts agent tasks into deterministic workflows, which Wade Foster says avoids the cost of an agent burning expensive tokens continuously.
“we're turning those workflows into deterministic workflows. Now, why is this important? Is if it's running agentically the full time, you're burning tokens left and right, and tokens are very expensive.”
Undated
One of Zapier's three AI transformation efforts is a 'software factory' that builds the machinery that writes code, rather than engineers writing it directly.
“So we have a software factory that's working on building the products of the future.”
Undated
Zapier uses go-to-market agents, particularly in its small-business funnel where it previously could not afford sales staff.
“We've got these go-to-market agents that are doing the same thing, you know, a lot of that is working at our, like, our small business funnel”
Undated
Wade Foster says Zapier employees now use meeting prep agents for nearly everything, a task that was previously not done well.
“we've all got meeting prep agents for pretty much everything we do when nobody was really doing that before.”
Undated
Wade Foster says Zapier doesn't have many outside investors, so it faces less investor scrutiny than a public company.
“we we're fortunate enough that we don't have like a ton of outside investors. And so we don't have the same scrutiny”
Undated
Wade Foster says the automation market is far larger than he imagined when he started Zapier about fifteen years ago.
“The market for automation was like orders of magnitude bigger than I ever thought it was when we started the company fifteen years ago.”
Undated
Zapier has long had a company value of defaulting to transparency, which preceded its push for public-by-default communication.
“Zapier's had this value of default to transparency for gosh forever, it feels like.”
Undated
Wade Foster says Zapier has held customers' service credentials for fifteen years and treats protecting them as a core responsibility.
“we've held these credentials for fifteen years, right? So this has always been like a an important thing inside of Zapier”
Undated
Zapier CEO Wade Foster says he points an AI agent at the company's Slack, email, meeting notes, project management, CRM tools and code base to get summaries of company activity.
“I can point an agent at all the data sources inside of a company, whether it's, you know, our Slack instance, email, meeting notes, project management, CRM tools, code base, et cetera.”
Undated
Wade Foster cites Zapier co-founder Brian's line that leaders can delegate work to AI but not accountability for its quality.
“my co-founder Brian has this line, you can delegate the work, but you can't delegate the accountability.”
Undated
Wade Foster lists as a Zapier communication rule that the author of a document should put more effort into it than the reader.
“I think one, the author should put more effort in than the reader.”
Undated
Zapier runs AI bots in customer support with humans reviewing at several steps of the workflow.
“we have, uh, AI bots that work in customer support, and there's human in the loops on, you know, a variety of steps in those workflows”
Undated
Foster says Zapier's customer support bots are measured at every step with metrics such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) and internal evaluations.
“those bots are measured very specifically. And, like, we have metrics every step of the way that are man measuring, you know, CSAT”
Episodes
- 9 Jun 2026Mozilla CTO: Why Most Enterprises Don't Control Their AI57m
- 24 Sep 2026How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy33m
- 9 Sep 2026Zapier wants to be the AI hub where all your agents connect38m
- 17 Sep 2026No Code Is Code: Zapier CEO Wade Foster on Headless Tools, Zapier MCP & Automation Bench1h 6m