Michael Koenig talks with Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, about running the company for 14 years without a CEO safety net and without ever naming a COO. Wade explains why he thinks hiring a chief operating officer from outside a company is a coin flip, why Zapier put AI transformation inside the chief people officer role instead of naming a dedicated AI executive, and why he believes AI adoption is fundamentally an organizational and people problem rather than a technology problem. The conversation covers Zapier's “code red” response to GPT-4, the pricing decision that traded short-term revenue for long-term customer trust, and what changed in Wade's own leadership style over 14 years in the same seat.

• Why Zapier has never had a COO and why Wade calls external executive hiring a coin flip
• Why AI sits inside the chief people officer's role at Zapier instead of a dedicated AI leader
• The 2023 “code red” triggered by the jump from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4
• How Zapier decides when a workflow needs deterministic software versus AI judgment
• Why Zapier delayed its mid-market and enterprise push, and what that delay cost
• Advice for non-tech companies on building an AI adoption mindset without a hackathon culture

Wade Foster co-founded Zapier and serves as its CEO. Zapier is a workflow automation platform that connects thousands of software tools and now powers billions of automated actions each month. Under Wade's leadership, Zapier grew to roughly 850 employees and a multi-billion dollar valuation while raising only a small seed round after Y Combinator.

Read the full episode page at Between Two COOs: Wade Foster on why AI adoption is a people problem.

Mentioned in this episode

• Zapier — https://zapier.com
• Acquired podcast — https://www.acquired.fm
• Y Combinator — https://www.ycombinator.com
• Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code
• Zapier MCP — https://zapier.com/mcp
• EVE Online — https://www.eveonline.com
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things — https://a16z.com/books/the-hard-thing-about-hard-things/
• The High Growth Handbook — https://press.stripe.com/high-growth-handbook