Zapier CEO Wade Foster on Why AI Is a People Problem, Not a Tech Problem

[gentle music] I started the company when I was 24.

14 years in, I still feel like I'm pretty young.

The thing is, the world doesn't stay static.

The world changes around you.

People study how you work, they pay attention to what works, what doesn't.

They develop new techniques 'cause they're trying to beat you.

If we're gonna be the automation company, that means AI is going to be priorities one, two, and three for the foreseeable future.

Hello, and welcome to Between Two COOs.

I'm your host, Michael Kanig, and today I'm joined by Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier.

Wade has been building the same company for 14 years, and that alone makes him an outlier.

Most tech startups don't make it past year five, and fewer still grow into a multi-billion dollar business and have taken as little funding as Zapier has.

And even fewer do it without losing their identity along the way.

Zapier is best known as the workflow automation layer behind modern work.

Millions of people use it to connect thousands of tools, and those workflows now power billions of actions every month.

But what interests me most isn't just what Zapier does, it's how the ca- company has managed to last.

Over the years, Wade has led Zapier through multiple technology waves, market shifts, and internal evolutions.

AI is the latest one, and a big one, but it's not the first stress test.

What makes this conversation interesting is how durable companies absorb change without thrashing, breaking trust, or losing coherence.

So this isn't a conversation necessarily about hype or tools or predictions.

It's about what Wade has learned by staying in the seat for 14 years, what had to change along the way, what didn't, and how that shows up today in the way that Zapier thinks about workflows, automation, and AI.

Wade, thanks for joining me.

[gentle music] I started the company when I was 24.

14 years in, I still feel like I'm pretty young.

The thing is, the world doesn't stay static.

The world changes around you.

People study how you work, they pay attention to what works, what doesn't.

They develop new techniques 'cause they're trying to beat you.

If we're gonna be the automation company, that means AI is going to be priorities one, two, and three for the foreseeable future.

Hello, and welcome to Between Two COOs.

I'm your host, Michael Kanig, and today I'm joined by Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier.

Wade has been building the same company for 14 years, and that alone makes him an outlier.

Most tech startups don't make it past year five, and fewer still grow into a multi-billion dollar business and have taken as little funding as Zapier has.

And even fewer do it without losing their identity along the way.

Zapier is best known as the workflow automation layer behind modern work.

Millions of people use it to connect thousands of tools, and those workflows now power billions of actions every month.

But what interests me most isn't just what Zapier does, it's how the ca- company has managed to last.

Over the years, Wade has led Zapier through multiple technology waves, market shifts, and internal evolutions.

AI is the latest one, and a big one, but it's not the first stress test.

What makes this conversation interesting is how durable companies absorb change without thrashing, breaking trust, or losing coherence.

So this isn't a conversation necessarily about hype or tools or predictions.

It's about what Wade has learned by staying in the seat for 14 years, what had to change along the way, what didn't, and how that shows up today in the way that Zapier thinks about workflows, automation, and AI.

Wade, thanks for joining me.