Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedSpeaker unverified: evaluation
30 Nov 2023 · 1:06:54 The Peel Zapier’s Secrets to Product Market Fit with Wade Foster (Co-founder and CEO of Zapier)
“perience contextualized and so you really have to if you really want to understand the advice you have to understand what the situation of that company was and then if your situation doesn't look like their situation that advice probably isn't as good or as relevant in some ways and so we spend a lot of time just going through the idea maze on this and then out the other side is that's where Innovation is that's where problem solving is and you're just trying to say like okay this is what we think is interesting this is what we think novel and that's probably why it looks like we're zagging is because we're just trying to do something that we think is helping our customers that they haven't in a way that they haven't help been helped before versus just trying to do something that like somebody's already done before if they've already done it it's like why why should we waste our time they got something good let's go do something that we think moves the ball down the field a little bit another question I really wanted to get into you have talked about hiring a CEO coach you said that was really helpful the thing that I thought was really interesting that you said was you've really s”
— Speaker unverified
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Speaker unverified
- Attribution
- Not verified from this transcript
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 30 Nov 2023 · 1:06:54
- Publisher
- The Peel
Transcript context
…gain into an API request that like runs in a very deterministic way do you foresee this workflow this kind of automation with gpts chat based interfaces AI native interfaces do you have any guesses or predictions and how that's going to kind of evolve over time I think we're going to just see a lot of innovation happening in um the application layer over the course of the next year um you know chat has been I I think everybody's like gotten really excited about chat and particular and I definitely think you're going to see a lot of products have a chat co-pilot type experience for every single application that you might use on the internet you'll probably have a chat thing that's sort of helping you interact with it but I do think that a place that is underexplored right now is non- chat interfaces like chat is not I think the ultimate interface for every experience there's probably some experiences that are quite incredible for for chat and you know chat GPT is obviously one that I think we've all probably used and uh found the the benefits of it but there's other experiences where you might say hey that this isn't actually the Beall and IND all and that's the area that I think is somewhat underexplored right now but I do think over the course of the next 12 18 months we're going to see a lot more Founders just approaching it from totally unique and different perspectives and um you know it's going to feel like what happened I think on the other side of the mobile era like the first mobile apps sort of felt like remnants of the desktop but you know as more people got to play with mobile we in We Invented new form factors like the idea of like swiping left and right is like totally a mobile first thing and so I do think we're going to have the equivalent versions of stuff like that um you know as more Founders have a chance to build products on top of llms is there anything you're kind of thinking about right now where you're like for whatever reason we're doing things different than what everyone else is probably the the way to answer how we go about this is one we just like to pay a lot of attention to what are our customer problems um you know I think is that old saying where it's like if your customers are telling you you have a problem like they're probably right they're telling you what the solution is they're probably wrong so we try and pay a lot of attention to you know what are the problems that they're telling us and you know that tells us quite a bit we do spend a lot of time talking to you know certainly peer companies and folks in our space trying to understand like how are they approaching these these problems we also like to get outside of that like go look at other Industries look at other companies look at history and see like how did those people approach similar situations similar problems what's the same about their situation what's different about their situation you know all advice is actually just like a set of experience contextualized and so you really have to if you really want to understand the advice you have to understand what the situation of that company was and then if your situation doesn't look like perience contextualized and so you really have to if you really want to understand the advice you have to understand what the situation of that company was and then if your situation doesn't look like their situation that advice probably isn't as good or as relevant in some ways and so we spend a lot of time just going through the idea maze on this and then out the other side is that's where Innovation is that's where problem solving is and you're just trying to say like okay this is what we think is interesting this is what we think novel and that's probably why it looks like we're zagging is because we're just trying to do something that we think is helping our customers that they haven't in a way that they haven't help been helped before versus just trying to do something that like somebody's already done before if they've already done it it's like why why should we waste our time they got something good let's go do something that we think moves the ball down the field a little bit another question I really wanted to get into you have talked about hiring a CEO coach you said that was really helpful the thing that I thought was really interesting that you said was you've really s truggled with delegation and that was something you got better at through the CEO coach I am also the same way so I'm curious what you've explored what you found Works in terms of Delegation I I won't pretend that I'm an expert at this I love being in the details I love how understanding how things work um I think it partly what makes me good at aspects of my job but I do think the thing that has worked for me is to to Really spend a lot of time with a person up front and say hey we are going to do a lot of time upfront you are I've hired you because I trust you you are an expert I believe in your capabilities and skills um so I want you here I'm here because I've spent 10 years 12 years building this things and I have a set of context and experience and ideas that are grounded in all this time I've spent with our customers I need your expertise and experience you need my context and understanding of customers so we're going to spend a lot of time UPF front making sure that we're on the sign page with those those things and then there's a set of shared principles by which we're optimizing for we're optimizing for a we're optimizing for B we're optimizing for SE and I find that when we agree on those shared principles often then when folks are coming to me with a potential solution or potential idea or potential way of going about it often times I'm like awesome sounds cool like that pretty much how I would have thought about it but if we don't agree on those principles I'll find myself looking at it going I don't get it like I don't think this makes s something feels off like it just doesn't feel right and then you're trying to go inside your head and say like why doesn't this feel right what's missing about this and often times you're trying to step back and zoom out and say like oh there's actually some fundamental disagreement that we have about how to go about this thing or what we're trying to do here and it's useful to go inspect ing to step back and zoom out and say like oh there's actually some fundamental disagreement that we have about how to go about this thing or what we're trying to do here and it's useful to go inspect that and then codify that and say hey this is this is actually a core part of how we make decisions or core part about how we approach this problem and then the more you're codifying those things the more it helps others make decisions you know when you're not in the room and so that's the thing that has worked best for me you know I'm still very active I'm still very involved in a lot of these types of decisions but a lot of times it's trying to get to the heart of like what are the principles what are the things we care about and then once I feel like we're there then it's Off to the Races go go go go go I feel really comfortable about delegating from that point on but if we're not in agreement on those things that's where I found it's really tough to delegate because someone goes off and just does a thing and you're like you know it's you sometimes you're like I need you to go da do XYZ and I was like I thought you were going to go East you went West now we're a problem because like we're in two opposite directions um so we got to go figure that out so it's basically hire someone that is very good at what you need spend a ton of time getting on the same page and just trust them that's sort of where it boils down to but like yeah I think the thing that I struggled with is like you'd hire this great person and you just sort of assume like oh it's just going to work from day one and you like I think the person assumes that too it's like they thought they assumed like I'll just figure it out on day one but that spend a lot of time together part that actually matters um and then figuring out how to codify this write this down for everyone else in the organization to see as well too then you build up this like shared you know a lot of people call it culture values principles you build up this like shared way of doing things that really helps the organization be faster on decision making be more aligned in what they're doing a as go and that's sort of how you can make a 700 person organization row row a boat sort of in the same direction there's this Instagram page called traded VC it's like this meme account basically on Instagram it's probably one of my favorite pages on Instagram so they have a question the traded VC Community wants to know do you have just a single piece of advice for Founders I I think there's probably like two things that has served zapier really well like one is just doing it like just there's a little bit of like Nike in here where it's like just just do it like we you know just get just try go figure it out roll Peres make that thing happen and probably the second thing is it's so hard to get people's attention it's so hard to stand out these days so be different like different is good like be you uh it it sort of works um you know especially if you're different in the ways that the customer likes so find a way to like do something different in novel that that generally is a pretty good formula be…
Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.