[HN Gopher] Learnings of a CEO: Wade Foster, Zapier ___________________________________________________________________ Learnings of a CEO: Wade Foster, Zapier Author : alexzeitler Score : 99 points Date : 2022-08-15 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com) | clement_b wrote: | Zapier's impact in the broader ecosystem isn't unlike AWS' in the | sense that it has enabled so many orgs to build faster without | the hassle (connectors, APIs, event processing, ...). I wonder | how many startups got where they are now thanks to good old | Zapier-based workflows built by sales ops & marketing teams | keen/forced to bypass eng :) | | Kudos to the team; What a success this is! | dwb wrote: | The word is "lessons". | zkid18 wrote: | Curious, how does hn community use Zapier? I tried it couple of | times, but it's tough to build anything sophisticated there than | basic trigger-based scenarios Imo, integromat (make.com) or n8n | are way more powerful. | soared wrote: | As a no code but very technical person zapier is incredible. | I've posted about it before but in the adtech world a lot of | people are technical but don't code and automate lots of | tasks/integrations/alerts/ etc with zapier. | nlstitch wrote: | hmm, too bad, nothing about holacracy / self steering teams, how | it failed them and what they learned from that. | kzh_ wrote: | Wade gave a memorable talk during our YC batch. When asked how he | ran Zapier remotely, which was unusual at the time, he said | something along the lines of "When I want to talk with the team, | I open Slack. When I want to file a support ticket, I open | Zendesk." | | Ironically, we were the last in-person batch that was cut short | by COVID, so his comments turned out to be quite helpful. | mdorazio wrote: | If nothing else, this interview shows that massive venture | funding and hiring bonanzas are not the only way to build a | successful company. I feel like that message gets lost too often | in the startup sphere. | marcinzm wrote: | No but it's much harder to compete when your competitors are | fueled by nearly unlimited VC money. They can pay better | compensation, hire more people, have lower prices and so on. | code_biologist wrote: | The combo of more _and better_ people is really a one two | punch of being well funded. | pbreit wrote: | With n=1, not sure if conclusive. | qbasic_forever wrote: | Atlassian bootstrapped to a billion dollar public company | without any VC: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how- | atlassian-bootstrapped... | [deleted] | phren0logy wrote: | Can we just never say "learnings" again, please? | eskatonic wrote: | As soon as I see the word "learnings" in the title, I know that | whoever wrote the article has nothing of value to say. | sokoloff wrote: | Is that an official ask? | Loughla wrote: | The issue here is that we have the evaluate the impact of | boiling that ocean. Is it a robust, punt of an appropriate | learning? Should we reach out and leverage that decision to | ensure we're giving 110% before we sent it over the wall? | Best practice, the bleeding edge of best practice, is to | empower employees. There are far too many moving parts to | avoid the low-hanging fruit. One of our core competencies is | leveraging out of pocket individuals to avoid jumping the | shark, because as we all know, when it's time to make hay, | make hay. Just some blue sky thinking from our last thought | shower is to drill down into our core values before sending | the key takeaways over to our tiger team. That way, the | S.W.A.T. team can make sure we're not moving the goalposts. | What we really need is the bandwidth to gain traction on this | aha moment ensuring this becomes a game changer, not just | short term. We need to bring to the table any mission | critical silver bullets, while keeping our stakeholders in | the loop. In the end, we should consider trimming the fat, | hard stop. | | I hate business lingo, and it's everywhere. Constant. | rcurry wrote: | Drop the last sentence and post this on LinkedIn. You'll be | a Sales Leadership Influencer in no time. | petsormeat wrote: | I have many coworkers with English as their next languages. | I feel terrible for them when they use phrases like these, | innocently assuming they're becoming more sophisticated in | their usage of English. | thatnerdyguy wrote: | Can we double-click into that? | rcurry wrote: | We should at least drill down. | [deleted] | criddell wrote: | The article contains five learnings. | elcomet wrote: | What would you say instead? | williadc wrote: | "lessons" almost always fits better. In this case "Lessons | for a CEO" or "Lessons from a CEO" would be preferable. | gms wrote: | You don't need the 'almost' qualifier :) | ggm wrote: | you have to fight forest fires when you see the camper dropping | the butt. Smokey says, hit 'em hard at birth, they don't re- | offend within reaching distance. | | At least, thats the lesson I teach. | RyanShook wrote: | Can we watch the feedback course Wade teaches? This is an | important topic that I've found varies greatly from manager to | manager and would appreciate a framework. | howmayiannoyyou wrote: | Zapier. Brilliant when it started and good for small integrations | today. I say that as a heavy user. Not brilliant and torturous | with complex integrations due to the linear zap creation UI in my | view. Doesn't handle failed connections well in my opinion. | Integromat's object UI is much easier to work with (but also far | from perfect). | victor106 wrote: | > because of Zapier's network effect on our developer platform | side | | what exactly is Zapiers network effect? | sharps_xp wrote: | I cannot imagine they are getting a good return on 700 people | weekly all hands meetings.. | epolanski wrote: | Yeah, like, who's gonna seriously follow those? One in ten? PMs | and POs? | | I honestly think that in all the companies I've been the all | hands should've been a 5 minute read email, rather than yet | another meeting that is splitting my day. | alexpotato wrote: | These types of blog posts/articles always make me curious: | | How were these people able to transition from founders of a tiny | company to successfully running and managing large (people or | revenue) companies? Many of them had never done this before so | how did they figure out what to do and how to do it? | | I often think of Zuckerberg or the Collison brothers as examples. | | They hadn't done anything like this before so how did it work out | for them? | | - Is it survivor bias? | | - Were the ideas and the execution so good at the beginning that | once the company was up and running it didn't matter if they made | mistakes? | | - Did they have excellent advisors/mentors? If so, how did they | know who to listen to? (I think of the scene in The Social | Network where Justin Timberlake advises Jesse Eisenberg to go in | wearing pyjamas to a VC meeting) | | - First mover advantage? (not the case for FB or Stripe as far as | I can tell) | | All of the above comes from reading this article: | https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/andrew-mason-on-grou... | | In it, Andrew Mason talks about how Groupon "followed the data" | into offering more and more deals to the point that they imploded | the company. He, like Zuck and the Collisons, had never done this | before and seemed intelligent and was acting in good faith. Yet | things went south for him. | | Genuinely curious to hear people's responses. | P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote: | Critically thinking and not being afraid of getting it wrong. | | 1. You can't move from a small company to running a large | company without being able to identify (eventually) where it | works in one but not the other, so you must think critically. | | 2. Not being afraid to get it wrong also means not shying away | from an admission that you need to improve and then doing so. | | I think where a lot of people get it wrong is more static | thinking. Applying what worked for you at the small company to | the large and expecting it to work. | | --- | | As an aside, I see this all the time, it's not just a founder | problem. I'm of the opinion that the reason agile mostly | doesn't work is because well-meaning people don't actually know | what good software dev looks like and reach out to | prescriptions such as scrum. They form the belief that's the | right way to do it and hang onto it, when in actuality if | they'd make a few non-agile adjustments they may find | themselves with a lot more success. | time_to_smile wrote: | Only a partial answer to your question (there's plenty of good | ones), but it reminds me of the time I reached out to the CTO | of a small startup looking to hire a director of data science. | | I've lead a few teams before and have a decade+ plus of | experience at a range of companies so I had a pretty reasonable | idea about what's out there, and I figured it was a small | startup so I might be a good fit. | | I got a pretty blunt response that they were looking for | someone that had managed teams for over 5 years, preferably at | a single org. Not unreasonable but when I looked at the CTO's | linked in they had only ever managed their current startup and | only for 3 years at the time of the discussion. | | I just found it curious that they felt the job of CTO could be | learned pretty much as you go, but anyone without their target | experience wasn't even worth talking to. | | It looks like they had major layoffs a year ago, and aren't | making much of a dent in their space so it's quite possible | that "survivorship bias" is a big part of it as well. | myownpetard wrote: | It makes sense in another light though. You should try to | hire people that will bolster your weak areas. In this case a | lack of experience managing larger teams. | ren_engineer wrote: | >How were these people able to transition from founders of a | tiny company to successfully running and managing large (people | or revenue) companies? Many of them had never done this before | so how did they figure out what to do and how to do it? | | lots of mentorship from investors and others with experience. | Even the most famous young founders had a veteran executive | running a lot of things behind the scenes. Steve Jobs had Mike | Markkula, Eric Schmidt was running the show at Google, Facebook | had Thiel and Sean Parker. This applies to pretty much every | one of these companies | | most of the startup myths about these companies are embellished | because having a young prodigy founder is good for marketing. | Of course some are never able to make the jump and get replaced | by the board | tmpz22 wrote: | Once you have even a small amount (say $500k) of perceived | success you find yourself meeting "helpers" constantly, people | who want to mentor you, people who want to be your friend, and | magically all these people want something from you. | | As your perceived worth goes up you start meeting more | "interesting" people who want to help more, and of course they | ultimately want something more from you. | | So you eventually have a big network through this process, and | at a certain level its not even about trading favors, but | trading the potential for a favor. And with this support group | you can answer almost any question, market trends, merger | opportunities, fund raising access, its all there for you. | silexia wrote: | As someone who has also successfully done this, I think it is a | matter of experience. You make mistakes and learn from them. | Lots of BSers get hired into executive positions, it's best to | simply do it and learn yourself along the way. | jrvarela56 wrote: | My impression is these people are great learners and upgrade | themselves to do what's required of them to grow the company - | most importantly how to hire, empower and motivate talented | people. We're (HNers I guess; assuming dev-focused mentality) | bound to think it means reading the manual and cracking complex | problems, but it's more towards prioritizing, figuring out who | knows what and how to manage people. | | I'm not an investor so this is all anecdata from going through | YC and having a close friend get to 100Ms in funding. My friend | has obv hired an amazing exec team, but like thousands of | things, he learned how to do it by reading, asking for advice | and asking for help. Early stage he figured out how to get a | 'technical cofounder' - literally got on the phone with 100 | engineers (got me to screen like 3-5 to get a gist of what I | was looking for). Of course, I was only just one source: for | everything he had to figure out/study he got input from many | sources. | | They learn, they figure out what's important enough for them to | put their time/attention, they delegate to talented people. I | guess the quote 'A players hire A players and B players hire C | players' applies too. They can tell who's an A player by | setting the bar high enough to their standard. | | I think there wont be a straight answer to this question - | people who figure it out make huge companies and a lot of money | as a reward for cracking this puzzle. Re:groupon then on top of | that you have a couple of dice rolling and if your number | doesn't hit you're out. | epolanski wrote: | Imho: once you have a product it's all about luck into meeting | and selecting the right people to help you. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-15 23:00 UTC)