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The CEO Who Pays Employees to De-Locate From the Bay

44 minutes 27 seconds

🇬🇧 English

S1

Speaker 1

00:00

I haven't started with questions from Twitter before but I feel like they kind of covered some of the initial ones I wanted to go off with so maybe we should just go with those So the first 1 was from Ben Thompson And he asked for more detail on the pay to leave San Francisco. So I think you guys called it delocation. Yeah. How's it going?

S2

Speaker 2

00:22

Well, we introduced this delocation package, I think it was in March. And the concept for those of you who aren't familiar was if you're in the Bay area and you take a job with Zapier, we'll pay $10,000 to help you relocate to anywhere, or as we call it, delocate. This was, this was an idea that 1 of our engineers came up with because we'd seen in interviews with folks from the Bay Area, they would come to Zapier because we're 100% remote and say like, oh, I'm interested in y'all in part because I like the product, but also because, you know, this remote thing helps me get away from San Francisco because I'm either disenfranchised with, you know, housing costs here or like I have family somewhere else that I'd rather be living with or I just wanna be somewhere else.

S2

Speaker 2

01:06

You know, a whole bunch of reasons, right? And so what the engineer on our team kind of hypothesized was like, well, maybe there's this nascent demand here in the Bay Area where folks who are like kind of just putting up with it because that's this is where the jobs are and he's like There's probably some folks who are kind of on the fence that like if a good opportunity came along They might be willing to jump on that but maybe they just need like a little bit of a nudge to go do this sort of thing and so that's where like the whole idea of this delocation package came. It's not that crazy like plenty of companies here in the Bay Area even like will pay relocation costs to help you move here sort of like well let's just turn it on its head and say, we'll help you move anywhere, right? So we launched that, I think it was in March.

S2

Speaker 2

01:51

And the funny thing was, since then, we've seen probably about, roughly about a 30% increase in applicants to Zapier. Wow. So pretty significant. Yeah, we've had like, our roles routinely get 100, 200 applicants.

S2

Speaker 2

02:05

Some roles we've even had, I think our record is like 1500 applicants for 1 open position.

S1

Speaker 1

02:10

And it's Signal, like those are, they're 30% increase in like quality candidates. Yeah, yeah.

S2

Speaker 2

02:15

Just across the board. And 1 of the interesting things we noticed was the applicants weren't actually from San Francisco. A lot of them were just from wherever the heck they were.

S2

Speaker 2

02:26

And so it was clear that the like offering this thing, You know, it got some buzz in mainstream media, and so it kind of just elevated the profiles app here. And so folks were like, even who weren't in the Bay Area, were like, this just seems like a cool company. They have the same types of values that I have, they are working on an interesting product, and so we got a lot of great applicants from outside the Bay Area again. So we've actually hired about 15 folks since then and only 1 person from the Bay Area.

S2

Speaker 2

02:55

She's in the process of like mulling over whether she wants to take it or not. So we actually haven't offered any because we haven't hired any folks.

S1

Speaker 1

03:02

Have you located anyone to the Bay Area

S2

Speaker 2

03:05

through it? No one's moved here so.

S1

Speaker 1

03:07

Okay. That's really funny. And do you guys ever do relocations other than this current thing?

S2

Speaker 2

03:13

No, not generally. Like most folks are where they want to be or like they're heading that way anyway. So like, that's, I mean, that's kind of the beauty of remote work is that.

S2

Speaker 2

03:23

You don't have to live in a place just because that's where the jobs are. You can live in the place that you want to be because that's just where you want to be. You know, you've got family there, you've got friends there, you've got life there, you've got a hobby there, you've got, you just want to explore the area because you've heard cool things. Like, it doesn't matter what the reason is, right?

S2

Speaker 2

03:40

Like, you can do that.

S1

Speaker 1

03:42

And so, how often are you actually interacting with, how many employees are you guys now?

S2

Speaker 2

03:46

We're at about 95.

S1

Speaker 1

03:47

Okay, How often are you interacting with, you know, a significant percentage of them in person?

S2

Speaker 2

03:54

Well, in person we do, so, we do this thing called Airbn onboarding, which when we hire folks, within the first month, we actually do like to have them spend a week in person out here in the Bay Area. So we'll rent an Airbnb, we'll bring their manager out here, them out here, and then spend a week working alongside them. So generally it ends up being like anywhere from like a half dozen to a dozen folks out here at a time.

S2

Speaker 2

04:19

And it works really nicely because the founders are all here. So we get to sit down next to them. And even, you know, the 95th person in the company, we get to know really well. Like we'll spend the night, like take them out to dinner.

S2

Speaker 2

04:34

We'll play games with them. Like we'll talk to them about why the role is important at the company, like why we're happy that they're here and they get like a full week with us, which is like pretty rare at, you know, once you pass like a certain amount of employees, like maybe you'll do like a lunch with the founders like right out the gate, but it's not that much time. So we actually like really spend a lot of time with them. You know, within that first month, for the, for those first folks.

S2

Speaker 2

04:59

So, you know, we do get to spend like a fair amount of time with a subset of folks every month. So basically a week every month I'm spending some time in person with a few people on the team.

S1

Speaker 1

05:08

Okay. And so do you think that your success as a remote team is a function of you starting remote or do you think you could have shaped into that?

S2

Speaker 2

05:16

I think it definitely helped a lot to have started that way. I think it would be pretty tough to transition any sizable team to like a remote or partial remote setup, because there's just like little cultural habits that you get into that are, that make remote kind of successful. So we started Zapier as a side project, side projects naturally, you don't have offices, you just work on them when you can, which is not necessarily in person, it's at a coffee shop or your house or whatever, right?

S2

Speaker 2

05:46

And so we got used to working through like pull requests and on Trello cards and in chat and things like that. And so that built up kind of our organizational muscle for like documenting things, writing down like processes and stuff like that. So then when you hire folks on they're able to like adopt that stuff. When you're in an office you up to a certain point you can kind of ignore that stuff because you have the option of tapping someone on the shoulder and being like hey you know what's the what's the command that I need to do for this again?

S2

Speaker 2

06:18

Or like, why is this not working? Can you help me? You know, whatever it is that you need help with, you can just pull folks into. But for us, like, you know, if you're working with a teammate halfway across the world, like, that's not an option.

S2

Speaker 2

06:29

So you kind of have to get good at like, Hey, here's like the read me for this stuff. And make sure that's all up to date and working pretty well. So I think had we have like started, you know, 10 people in an office and then added remote folks, like we sure certainly could have gotten there. And I know companies that have done that, but I think it's just that, you know, you have to unlearn some stuff and then relearn it a different way.

S2

Speaker 2

06:52

Whereas we just learned it that way from the get go.

S1

Speaker 1

06:54

And was there a point at which like you guys were scaling up and you were like, oh, we're we've entered like a different class of like remote team size and we have to handle things differently.

S2

Speaker 2

07:04

Yeah, definitely. They're not, and it's not too different I think from even in locate like co-located companies have like those inflection points to where you're like we need to change some stuff up because it's not working. So for us, there's about 3 of them where we've kind of had to really not reinvent ourself, start to rethink a few things.

S2

Speaker 2

07:25

So the first 1 was around like 20 people, which was up until that point, I was the sole manager, but like not really management. Like when it's less than 20, everything kind of self happens. So like me and Brian and Mike, my co-founders were just kind of making sure things that happened. But once we got to about 20 or so, it's like, actually, there's starting to be some coordination overhead.

S2

Speaker 2

07:46

We need to like, think about like, maybe what a little bit of a management structure starts to look like. And so Brian, Mike, and I started really sharing those roles around there more in a little more formal matter. Then at about 40, it got 40 to 50 or so, it got even more complex and we added more managers. And then that was like the first time where I was solely managing other managers.

S2

Speaker 2

08:15

So that was like an interesting transition as well. You know, the folks that were like primarily hiring people and onboarding folks were not necessarily me anymore. And a lot of times it wasn't. So that was kind of a shift.

S1

Speaker 1

08:29

And So like, how does that work then as a remote manager of managers? What are your like pro tips having now you've been done it for several years now?

S2

Speaker 2

08:38

Yeah, I think you've got to set like a, you really need to set like the values of what your company is going to look like. So you know, just the high level things that you care about. You know for us it's like we like folks who are like default action get stuff done because you know there's not someone sitting beside you to help you out that's like a big thing.

S2

Speaker 2

08:59

We like folks who are good writers and can be transparent because that's really important in a remote team. We like folks who have a lot of empathy and are like really good, just helpful people because you're working in Slack and in text all day. So it's like, you need to be able to empathize when maybe like a sentence doesn't come off quite right or like whatever, like you can be like, ah, no, I trust that they, like they had good intentions here. This wasn't like meant to be, you know, harsh to me or whatever, right?

S2

Speaker 2

09:30

So those are like important values that we had that lend themselves well to remote environments. And once you have that stuff set in place, you kind of have, you have to adopt some sort of like management paradigm, like how you approach management. I think a lot of companies, at least in startups, like they try to reinvent the wheel here I think it's not probably a great idea, especially if you're growing really fast. It's there's like a lot of good like scientific back to research on like how to be a good manager like go find the good stuff and learn that and just kind of just cargo cult adopt that in your organization because it's gonna be way, you're gonna have like way less problems than if you tried to like come up with your new inventive management structure alongside this other like new inventive product market the thing that you're trying to bring to market.

S2

Speaker 2

10:19

So like we, there's this podcast called manager tools and they have like a paradigm and we basically just said like, we're just going to use their philosophy on how they go about stuff because we were like jive, like 95% of it jived with us. So we were like, we're gonna just use what they have. And that helps get all the managers that I was working with, I knew that they were following a similar process that I would be following with folks. So that kind of raised like the organizational baseline for like your experience at Zapier is gonna be at least this good.

S2

Speaker 2

10:50

You might get a manager that's like above and beyond and way better, but like, hopefully we don't have any like managers that are just like bad, like really, really bad. We wanted folks to be at that baseline. So we make sure they go through the training that they need to have and kind of understand the values and how we apply them and all that sort of stuff. And then that helps for me, who's not managing managers, I can kind of know that they're doing, following our guidelines and stuff like that.

S1

Speaker 1

11:19

Okay. And so now that like you're, you know, approaching a hundred people, do you feel that there's another inflection point coming?

S2

Speaker 2

11:27

Definitely around like, definitely so. Like we started hiring probably our default is to like, we like to promote folks from within. So historically, almost all of our folks who've moved into like management positions have been working at Zapier for, you know, 6, 12 months, like a good chunk of time, which helps them learn the culture, but they also know the product and the role and everything really, really well.

S2

Speaker 2

11:57

Downside is, they're a new manager, so they have to learn some of that stuff, but that's not unteachable stuff. Now we're at a point where occasionally we don't have someone ready to like promote up and we have to hire in a new manager. So like that's a new challenge for us now because

S1

Speaker 1

12:10

you're

S2

Speaker 2

12:10

bringing in someone who's going to like guide a function or a set of people who you know primary experiences at other orgs which is not necessarily a bad thing. They bring in great outside perspectives that have been helpful, but you also have to like teach them the org while they're also trying to teach other, like train and coach other people in the organization as well. So that's like an interesting inflection point as well.

S1

Speaker 1

12:35

Okay. And you're going through that right now?

S2

Speaker 2

12:37

Yeah, like we brought on a few, you know, outside management folks now and you know, it's going pretty well, but like there's like anything like there's, you know, things that you got to keep working on.

S1

Speaker 1

12:49

All right, so Ben asked like a multi-part question. He, and like many of these questions were common across Twitter. So, they want to ask you about raising money.

S1

Speaker 1

13:01

So, you guys are like famous or infamous for doing YC, raising some money and then never raising money again.

S2

Speaker 2

13:08

Yeah.

S1

Speaker 1

13:11

Like I'm going to combine a couple of questions here. So another person, Matt Sherman, who actually wanted you to come on the podcast from the outset. He basically said, why did you guys choose to go into YC if you weren't planning to raise a lot of capital after?

S1

Speaker 1

13:28

And maybe you were planning to, and you didn't decide.

S2

Speaker 2

13:32

Yeah, well, the primary reason we did YC wasn't for the capital. The primary reason we did YC was because we were from Missouri, relatively unknown and not well connected into the broader tech ecosystem, particularly for our product which is integrations with other SaaS companies, we were building a lot of those relationships from scratch. And YC kind of helped us, well we're just able to plug into an existing network basically.

S2

Speaker 2

14:04

So for us the network was really valuable because you know then when we went into partners at least there was like some thread, somebody who said like oh yeah we know this team, this company, like they're pretty good folks, like you should you should chat with them. Even when you're really, really small, like we were at the time and no 1 really had any sort of reason outside validation reason to believe in us. Other than like, Hey, they seem like they're building a cool product. Right.

S2

Speaker 2

14:29

Right. So for us, like that was the primary reason for doing YC. The money, sure, like, okay, it was nice, right? But, you know, I don't think that was the primary reason for us doing it.

S2

Speaker 2

14:42

And then, you know, afterwards, we did take a little bit of money because when you're just getting started, like things cost money. And like, if you don't have anything and you haven't figured out like a business model yet, like, you know, and if you're going to be living in the Bay Area, which we felt we wanted to like, try and stick around a little bit because to help build up those relationships, it's just really freaking expensive to live here. So a little bit of money helped us kind of get past those early days when, you know, we just weren't pulling in that much revenue.

S1

Speaker 1

15:11

And you guys were priced a little bit differently, right? Like you started out charging people And then you went freemium, right? And so that was a function of the money as well.

S2

Speaker 2

15:19

Yeah. You, that allowed us to do, yeah, at least try freemium and see if that was a model that would work, which if you weren't like, I mean, if you. Aren't doing like freemium is a bad idea generally for bootstrap companies, because like, you're going to have a ton of support for free users who don't pay you anything. And if you're not getting any money from them, it's going to be really hard to bootstrap.

S2

Speaker 2

15:40

So yeah, like allowed us to experiment with the business model a little bit.

S1

Speaker 1

15:45

Okay. And so why did you choose to not continue to raise money?

S2

Speaker 2

15:48

I mean, we never needed to, is the, the pragmatic answer. And I think we've always taken a very like pragmatic approach to fundraising. You know, a lot of people have this, you know, it's like, well, it's either, it's either bootstrap or, you know, or it's like VC and there's like some identity involved in it.

S2

Speaker 2

16:06

Which I think when you like start to put your own identity and like, well I'm a bootstrapper, I'm a VC thing like that starts to affect your decision making in ways that are probably not healthy for your company. And it's just better to look at money and fundraising generally as like a tool. It's a tool in your tool belt that you can use if you need it. If you don't need it, you don't need it.

S2

Speaker 2

16:29

You shouldn't have to use it. And so that's how our approach to fundraising always was, was it's just a tool to help you if you need it. If you don't need it, then why take on the dilution? And so for us was we, we were able to figure out the business model and we, our growth rates were working just fine.

S2

Speaker 2

16:45

And we've never been hindered by our ability to spend capital. We've always felt like we're spending at a rate that was comfortable for us. So bringing in more capital wasn't going to fundamentally change our ability to grow the company. So we always just said, well, we'll just keep growing it how we're doing it.

S1

Speaker 1

17:03

And so then I imagine you get a lot of questions from people who are like, should I raise money? Should I not raise money? What should I do?

S1

Speaker 1

17:10

What are your, do you have like a mental model to advise people on that?

S2

Speaker 2

17:14

Well, you know, I think it's a pretty personal decision. To me, the answer is generally like, what is the business market you're tackling? Right?

S2

Speaker 2

17:26

There's some products that yeah, probably is going to lend itself more towards that. Like, you know, pure enterprise plays sometimes take a little while to develop and you're gonna need more capital out the gate. Things that require like inventory or infrastructure, things like that are going to be capital intensive. So sometimes fundraising is really just a function of the market that you decide to go after.

S2

Speaker 2

17:47

So that plays into it. But then also it does depend on like how you want to go about things. Like you can be a successful bootstrap company and be the winner of your market. You look at something like MailChimp, which haven't raised a single dime.

S2

Speaker 2

18:02

They have dozens of well-funded, super well-funded public companies that are direct competitors and still MailChimp takes it home as the winner of that market. So there's a lot of these phrases that people say like, ah, winner take all money. Mark, you better raise a bunch of money. They're just kind of untrue.

S2

Speaker 2

18:22

You really need to look at your market and just understand it really well. And fundraising can help you create a moat, but usually it's not why you created a moat. Having more money doesn't necessarily make the moat it is a tool to help you figure out what is the moat that's gonna help you build your company and if money isn't the thing that's gonna help you do it you need to figure out what is gonna help you kind of build your moat and help you grow your company.

S1

Speaker 1

18:46

So then how do you how do you better I mean define like a winner-take-all market versus like why was MailChimp you know possible?

S2

Speaker 2

18:55

Well so like MailChimp isn't in a winner take all market, right? Like there's not a network effect that, you know, MailChimp doesn't get better because there's more MailChimp customers, right? Winner take all markets tend to exist where the product gets better because there's more customers.

S2

Speaker 2

19:09

And this often happens in like B2C markets. So, you know, like Google gets better because more people use Google. Facebook gets better because all your friends use Facebook. Those are like classic examples of network effects, really helping the product get better.

S2

Speaker 2

19:23

And the business model doesn't really work unless everybody is kind of using it. Whereas in B2B, Like it's pretty rare to have like true winner take all markets. You know, if you're making yet another CRM company, you know, there's, there's dozens of CRM companies that are very good CRM companies that compete with each other head to head and are all successful. And they're going to continue to grow and be successful.

S2

Speaker 2

19:48

And that's pretty much how it exists in B2B because it's very tough to build like true network effects in B2B. So if you can find a way to like have a B2B company that has true network effects, that's probably going to be a pretty special thing. And it's worth trying to figure 1 out, but it's not a necessity to build a good company.

S1

Speaker 1

20:09

And so looking back on kind of like using YC as a vehicle into the bay, Was that helpful for you or?

S2

Speaker 2

20:17

Yeah, definitely. You know, I remember early on we had a relatively big company that we were trying to build a partnership with. And there was a bit more like bureaucracy and hoops to jump through to build a partnership with versus a lot of the companies we were working with at the time.

S2

Speaker 2

20:34

And we just kind of tried to go through like their typical front, you know, they had an email or a contact form on their website, like we filled it out. And we were just like not making any headway at all that way. It was just, you know, we, I think we got in touch with 1 of their like frontline people and they just didn't understand what we were doing or why it even mattered. And you know, kind of just set us to the side and then we tried another angle and it just, just things weren't happening.

S2

Speaker 2

20:59

And then when we got in YC, 1 of the first things I did was, you know, emailed the folks and PG was like, oh yeah, we can help with that and found a, you know, like a company that acquired like their CEO. And like I had an intro to like a high level VP, like in 2 days. And you know, that week it was like, oh yeah, this is great. We should definitely be doing something with this.

S2

Speaker 2

21:17

So, you know, those relationships clearly matter in business and YC had already tapped in and kind of set up its own and it had connections into the broader tech ecosystem, you know, helped us plug in and be successful because those existed.

S1

Speaker 1

21:33

And so then what do you advise founders who are starting companies, you know, in Missouri, in Florida, you know, in other countries? Yeah, what do you tell them? What are your tips?

S2

Speaker 2

21:42

Well, I think, you know, the biggest thing is similar to what you all preach all day every day, which is, you know, make something that people want, right? So figure out, you know, what it is that people want, figure out what they're gonna pay for, and just make them incredibly happy. You don't necessarily, well, there's nowhere does it, like, there's so many companies that are successful that are outside the Bay Area, that I think if you're getting caught up and if people are telling you, you have to be in the Bay Area to be successful, like you should probably be a little more critical of that advice because there's so many examples that are just like that not being true pay attention to the fundamental things that make companies really good which is good products happy customers And like working really hard and getting a little lucky.

S2

Speaker 2

22:33

Like those are generally like the 4 things if you do those pretty well, like you're gonna have some level of success. You may not be like a breakaway success because a lot of that stuff depends on like timing and more luck and market factors and things like that. But generally, if you do those 4 things, you'll be successful. Some companies may be more successful in the Bay Area because of unique factors for that company, but I think those are fewer and far between than most companies.

S1

Speaker 1

23:00

It seems to be more of a psychological thing right because like people have this somewhat of an imposter syndrome Where they're like oh, we can't be that but in reality most companies aren't venture-backed anyway.

S2

Speaker 2

23:11

Yeah, well, I think 1 of the things that You know perpetuates this myth a little bit is just kind of the way the media cycle works is the media tends to write about companies that they think are doing great. It's very difficult for the media to get access to real factual data like revenue numbers to know which companies are doing great. And so they end up having to rely on proxies for that.

S2

Speaker 2

23:37

And a good proxy often is, you know, where's the venture funded companies happening and venture funded companies have tend to happen closest to where VCs happen to live because they don't like to travel that much to go fund companies. And so that tends to be Bay Area companies. And so the media ends up perpetuating kind of this myth that the great companies are in the valley. That's obviously, you know, there's a lot of stereotypes involved.

S2

Speaker 2

24:02

That's not universally true. But on the whole, that happens quite a bit. And, you know, an early a young founder, someone who's a first time founder, you know, for them, they don't have that filter to understand sometimes, like what is good advice versus what someone perpetuating kind of a myth.

S1

Speaker 1

24:20

And has being here changed your product all that much? Because you guys started out basically consulting for other people. You were doing these integrations by hand.

S1

Speaker 1

24:28

And then you're like, oh, What if we just made it easier for everyone to do all these integrations? From a

S2

Speaker 2

24:33

product standpoint, no, it's not changed.

S1

Speaker 1

24:35

Okay. And so what has changed since being here?

S2

Speaker 2

24:38

And I mean, those relationships, right. You know, we mentioned, you know, the YC connection, you know, for, for getting in with that partnership with a big company, that was nice. You know, we've been able to build relationships with, you know, founders of our partner companies a lot easier.

S2

Speaker 2

24:53

And that was more valuable early on. But as we kind of built a brand and got to a place where we had a bit of success, like that stuff came to us naturally. So at this point in time, like, you know, I could be in the Bay Area or it could be somewhere else and it just really wouldn't matter too much.

S1

Speaker 1

25:13

And then how do you guys think about competitors? It's like you've said, you know, you could have built this company without necessarily raising any money. That means other people might be able to jump on and do the same thing.

S1

Speaker 1

25:26

What do you guys look out for?

S2

Speaker 2

25:27

Well, I think the biggest thing is like figure out what your like competitive advantage is and find ways to lock them out. So for us, you know, we have the most integrations of anyone and most of our partners are building the integrations for us. And so that kind of builds a bit of a moat for us in that, You know, if you want to, you know, build a head to head, you know, competitor to us, you need to find a way to build as many integrations as we have.

S2

Speaker 2

25:54

You know, there, or you need to find a different way to attack us. Like coming head to head wouldn't be the way to do it. So like it, for most people, it's figuring out what it is that makes you, like, makes your, you're the reason why people choose your product. Like, what is it the reason that they choose your product?

S2

Speaker 2

26:13

And like, use that to help lock out other folks

S1

Speaker 1

26:17

and

S2

Speaker 2

26:17

make sure that you are indeed the best product and value on the market for your customers that you want to serve.

S1

Speaker 1

26:25

Right. And so where do you see your product evolving so it continues to have a wider mode?

S2

Speaker 2

26:29

Well for us, like you know, we've historically nailed our like our best customers have been in S&B. And so we've done a really good job there. Now we're working a lot harder on, we launched a Teams product in March.

S2

Speaker 2

26:42

And so we're starting to figure out what are the things that we need to do to help expand our adoption inside of like enterprise companies and things like that. Because the needs are, the core product works for them, but there's extra needs that are important in enterprise products and stuff like that. So those are things that we start to think about.

S1

Speaker 1

27:00

And how do you explain it to like as a small business, you know If you have someone like sort of technical on the team, it's pretty easy to get like, okay This is what Zapier does like right if you're selling to a giant company How do you have to explain it to them and who do you explain it to? Yeah to get them to buy it

S2

Speaker 2

27:16

Well, that's tough This is where like, you know having a product that solves like a very specific problem problem helps. And this is where the freemium business model helps a lot, because people can self-serve, try out your product, figure out what they like about it. And then you can use the person who's already adopted it as a way into your organization and they can be like your champion for you.

S2

Speaker 2

27:38

And that way you don't have to be like cold selling into orgs. Instead, you have a warm person on the inside that's basically saying, no, no, this is great. We should adopt this. This is exactly what we need.

S2

Speaker 2

27:48

So I think that's where you know freemium really does excel. If you can make pull it off it will help you get that early adoption into organizations that can then pull you across the organization as well.

S1

Speaker 1

28:01

And conversely what's been difficult about getting into these enterprises?

S2

Speaker 2

28:05

Well, I mean, there's just like a lot of bureaucracy around it, right?

S1

Speaker 1

28:08

So it's

S2

Speaker 2

28:09

the same old stuff. You know, they have purchasing departments and they have process that you have to go through and there's just, you know, think boxes, a lot of boxes to check more or less is what it boils down to.

S1

Speaker 1

28:21

Right. Okay. So, Matt had another question. It's another location question actually.

S1

Speaker 1

28:30

So what advice do you have for a founder who's building a billion dollar company in a city where no 1 has done it before? I

S2

Speaker 2

28:39

mean the biggest challenge, I mean this is tough for me because I haven't built a billion dollar company yet either. But my instinct is that the thing that you're gonna struggle with maybe is Azure scaling past that mark is does that city have enough talent to support your organization? And that can be a real challenge in smaller cities across the United States is like, do you have the, like, is there enough technical talent?

S2

Speaker 2

29:05

Is there enough sales talent? Can you train, if not, can you, do you have effective training programs in your organization that can take, you know, ambitious folks and get them trained up on your product and turn them into people who can be effective in your organization. Because when you just look at the unit economics of a town that's maybe 100,000, 200,000 people, that's just not that many people. And a lot of them are maybe not necessarily going to be in the industry that you're in.

S2

Speaker 2

29:34

So as you get to a billion dollar organization, you're going to need a lot of people to help you and is there enough there? So I think that's probably the biggest scaling challenges you might actually just run into if you're the first in a city of a billion dollars or a billion dollar company is just is there the talent there.

S1

Speaker 1

29:53

And how do you manage I mean really how do you manage training people up remotely because like are you because you have kind of a pick across the whole world, do you instead focus on hiring more experienced people or do you grab younger people and bring them up?

S2

Speaker 2

30:10

Our preference has definitely been historically to just work with senior folks. We just hire the best that we can for different roles. But you're going to find like even still, you're going to hire ambitious folks who want to get better and want to take on new challenges.

S2

Speaker 2

30:24

And so you're going to want to find ways to handle that. So, like, for example, you know, we hire ambitious folks into our support team who often have experience and are senior for that role. But oftentimes they still have even bigger ambitions still. So you know 1 of our guys who just recently joined our platform engineering team started in support and you know he had ambitions to do that and so we made sure that you know his manager knew that And then we made sure an engineering manager knew that.

S2

Speaker 2

30:55

And we kind of had a plan like, okay, well, here's the tactical skills you're going to need to learn. Here's the things inside the org that you can, when you see these opportunities, go make sure that you're the first person, you know, trying to tackle these things and helping out with these things. Here's the things external that you can learn on your own time. That's going to make this stuff a little easier for you.

S2

Speaker 2

31:14

And You know, these are the benchmarks that will let you know, like you're ready to make that jump. So basically we just like worked with him to figure out like, here's, here's the plan that you need to set up. And you know, from there, it's kind of on, on the person to, you know, go make it happen. And he was able to make it happen and joined our platform engineering team earlier this year.

S2

Speaker 2

31:34

I think that's like just a discussion you need to have with every person that's on your team is just understand like, hey, what are your career goals? What do you want to achieve while you're here? Are there skills that you want to pick up? Are there, you know, areas of the organization that you want to have an impact on and Then as a manager like figuring out like okay How can we make sure that this person has an opportunity to tackle that stuff in a way that aligns with?

S2

Speaker 2

31:56

The projects that we need to make the organizational successful

S1

Speaker 1

31:59

and it's not like public in any way within the organization? It's like, you know, these are your objectives and goals for this year?

S2

Speaker 2

32:07

We haven't gotten like super rigid about like, you know, OKRs or KPIs or things like that. We do have them, but They're, you know, each manager talks with their, you know, person on their team, and they, you know, directly and sets them up kind of for them. And so they're, they're a little bit fluid and we're working on like solidifying like a process for that.

S2

Speaker 2

32:28

Cause I do think it's a good idea.

S1

Speaker 1

32:29

Well, cause you guys, yeah, yeah. Everything seems to have to be clearly communicated and logged, right? So it doesn't like slip between the cracks because, you know, say I'm going for 1 thing and you don't know it and maybe my manager is cool with it, but you're like, why is Craig doing this stuff all the time?

S1

Speaker 1

32:45

Yeah, he's off here in

S2

Speaker 2

32:45

the corner, right? Like, what's this guy doing?

S1

Speaker 1

32:48

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, still working on that.

S1

Speaker 1

32:50

And then how, how does that all affect like retention? Do you guys have, how does your retention like benchmark to, you know, like a tech company out here?

S2

Speaker 2

32:59

Our attention is like incredibly high. So, we actually just ran the numbers last week, like 97% retention for over the last 12 months.

S1

Speaker 1

33:08

Okay.

S2

Speaker 2

33:10

All right. We did, we started doing like an employee net promoter score and came in at like 72 which is like pretty world-class. So I think, you know, working on your organization is like a really, really important thing to do because past a certain point, like you aren't going to be the person that's the building the product and getting things done.

S2

Speaker 2

33:36

You sure you'll provide some certain amount of vision and direction to make some of that happen, but a lot of the actual work is being done by other folks in your organization. So you really do need to make sure to invest in them and, you know, put them up in an environment where they can be successful. And so that's like primary a lot of what I try and work on is make sure that we have the right people and that we're working on the right things and that they have the right plans in place for them to be successful just as people too. So yeah.

S1

Speaker 1

34:09

Then how do you keep track of like the, the happiness of people on like a day to day or week to week, month to month basis?

S2

Speaker 2

34:16

I mean, the survey is like kind of the formal way that we've started doing it, but a lot of it is just comes down to a relationship between like the manager and the person. So, you know, they do like a weekly 1 on 1 with them, digging in and like, how's things going? Like, you know, you feel like you're getting to work on the things that you want to work on, you feel like you're advancing, it has some of those types of questions.

S2

Speaker 2

34:36

And then we do other things to just like, encourage, like, you know, good cross company, communication, camaraderie, stuff like that. So we have, we do this thing called pair buddies. So every week you randomly get paired up with someone across the organization. You don't just jump on like a video conference call and just talk to them.

S2

Speaker 2

34:55

Like, kind of like a, you know, like a coffee outing, I guess that you might do it in another org. You know, just talk about whatever, right? It doesn't have to be work specific. It's super informal.

S2

Speaker 2

35:06

You can talk about family, hobbies, whatever, right? It helps folks get to know each other. And then we're like not very restrictive about like off topic stuff in Slack. We're kind of okay with that because in normal organizations, like people are gonna have like water cooler talk and like talk at lunch and all that sort of stuff.

S2

Speaker 2

35:26

And so like, that's fine. That stuff should, people should have a place for that inside of a remote organization. So we have like a series of slack channels that are prefixed with fun that tend to just be like off-topic channels where people do whatever. And then every now and then like people come up with like random things.

S2

Speaker 2

35:41

So like I think a couple weeks ago someone on our support team wanted to do like it was the end of Friday afternoon on like Pacific time zone, so like everybody in the company's basically, it's like soon to be or almost weekend time. And they're like, let's do like a random gif dance party. And so they like picked a random song from Spotify somehow and then we're like, all right, here's the song now, like make a gif of yourself like dancing to this thing. It's like about a dozen people like uploaded random gifs into Slack that were just, you know, for this song.

S2

Speaker 2

36:13

And so it's just like stuff like that. We try not, like We don't want to take ourselves too seriously. It's like, this is a place where you can enjoy yourself too a little bit. Let's get our stuff done and enjoy our time here, right?

S1

Speaker 1

36:24

Totally. And so, I guess slightly going off topic, almost every interview I've listened to or seen with you. It's like, remote work. It's like not raising money.

S1

Speaker 1

36:35

It's the location. That's all that stuff. What's something that you don't often talk about that you're like passionate about, maybe it's within Zapier, maybe it's not.

S2

Speaker 2

36:46

I think that there's probably like a, 1 thing that I don't often talk about is like Like learning a lot and really like speed as a way to learn things like really going deep on a topic so Everything I do I try and do like really really well To give you an example, so I started playing racquetball like probably about 2 and a half years ago now. I was playing in college a little, but just like for fun. And then I realized about, you know, 2 years in, 2 or 3 years into Zapier, I like had stopped exercising.

S2

Speaker 2

37:22

I was starting to put on some weight like you know founder 15 though in my case it might have been 20 or 25 and I was like all right I just need to get this under control so I started playing racquetball actually was like you know I was like oh I actually enjoy doing this it's like okay now how can I once you start getting into it's like this is good exercise but I actually want to be good at this? It's like, how can I be, get to where I'm as good as I possibly can be as quickly as I can? And I think a lot of folks spend a lot of time when they're first learning something, trying to be like perfect at it. They're like, I wanna figure out all the things that I could possibly need to know about this instead of just getting in and trying to like, What are the few things that I can get better on each day?

S2

Speaker 2

38:04

And so, you know, this, for me with racquetball, I was like, all right, I need to just play a lot. That's like the biggest thing. So I started playing like 3 or 4 times a week. I found a coach that like was teaching me a few things.

S2

Speaker 2

38:15

And like every time I would get out once a week, he would teach me 1 new thing and it was like, all right, I'm just going to practice that 1 new thing when I'm out playing with folks. It didn't even matter. So it was like, this is the shot I'm going to take. Even if that wasn't the right shot to take in that moment, it was like, I'm going to make that shot anyway, because I'm just going to keep working on it.

S2

Speaker 2

38:33

And I think this kind of like approach to learning really helps in all sorts, like for whatever you're trying to learn. So like, this is something I help talk to, like for everyone who's joining our support team, I'm like, look, you know, out the gate, you're going to know like next to nothing about what you need to do. The biggest way you can get better is not by writing a perfect answer to this 1 ticket, but it's trying to do as many tickets as you possibly can in a given day. Because If you're able, you know, out the gate to answer 20 emails a day for the first week, well, at the end of the week, you've done 100 emails versus the person who only does, you know, 5 a day, they've only done 25.

S2

Speaker 2

39:12

So now you have, you know, 75 more interactions of learning than the person who only did 5. So it's like if you can get enough reps in basically, that's gonna really accelerate your learning. So I think a lot of folks spend too much time on being perfectionist about things, and they forget a lot of times, if you just do it enough times you're just gonna get better at it because you've done It a lot So that's like a 1 thing that I think is like a lot of founders could could really Learn from it's just like don't worry about trying to be perfect just try a bunch of stuff like just do a lot of things and you're gonna get better at it.

S1

Speaker 1

39:50

That's great advice and there's often such little downside. Yeah. Like especially in software like maybe you're shooting up rockets and that's 1 thing.

S2

Speaker 2

39:58

Yeah right.

S1

Speaker 1

39:58

But like you know if you misalign a form or something it doesn't matter.

S2

Speaker 2

40:02

And early on right You have barely any customers like whatever, right? Like, you know, you'll figure it out, right? Like it's not going to be the end of the world.

S2

Speaker 2

40:11

You'll have another opportunity to do something else.

S1

Speaker 1

40:13

Are you trying to learn anything else right now?

S2

Speaker 2

40:16

Oh, I'm still trying to get better. A racquetball. But that's a big 1.

S2

Speaker 2

40:19

And then, I mean, I'm always trying to like be a better CEO, right? Like I think that's been like a big transition for like the last years. Like there's a certain point where you stop being like a founder and a part of the team and you're like, actually now I need to start thinking about like, me as a CEO and like a leader of the organization and making sure that like, we're setting ourselves up for a good future. And so that's something like I'm always like learning and trying to get better at.

S2

Speaker 2

40:44

In fact, 1 of the things that I always like I like to do is about every 6 months. I'll go seek out founders who are basically a year ahead of me And just ask like what what did you do in your last year? Like what was the smartest thing you did in last year? What was the dumbest thing you did in last year?

S2

Speaker 2

41:02

Like, what are the things that you're really happy about? What are the things you regret? And that kind of helps paint a picture of what's to come for me. And so, that way I can sometimes you can preempt some of it and sometimes you can't.

S2

Speaker 2

41:16

Sometimes it's just like,

S1

Speaker 1

41:17

you know,

S2

Speaker 2

41:18

it's like, you just know, like it's coming, right?

S1

Speaker 1

41:21

It's like, well, okay, so yeah, share some wisdom. What do you expect? What's coming down the pike?

S2

Speaker 2

41:25

Well, you know, I think, you know, 1 of the interesting things that I've heard from other folks is, you know, as you scale your organization, you know, you get past 100 people, you're going to realize like the folks that got you there might not get you to the next level. And that's not anything inherently good or bad in the people that you've worked with. That's just something that I think a lot of folks have realized.

S2

Speaker 2

41:47

It's like, some people thrive in smaller organizations. Some people are better, bigger organizations. And there are, there is a Venn diagram overlap where people are successful in both and can scale, go the distance, but that's Not always the case. And so that's a thing that, you know, we've been lucky to have really good retention rate, but it'll be interesting to see like how far out we can push that.

S2

Speaker 2

42:09

You know, given that this kind of phenomenon exists where like people, you know, end up going out to like decide, like, I just like being in smaller organizations. So like that's 1 thing that I've kind of got like in the back of my head where I'm like alright how are you gonna like yeah handle some of this stuff.

S1

Speaker 1

42:26

That's great. I guess my well yeah I guess my last question is then like what are your pro racquetball tips?

S2

Speaker 2

42:33

Oh goodness, pro racquetball tips.

S1

Speaker 1

42:34

I don't know anything about racquetball so.

S2

Speaker 2

42:38

Find like the old guy at the gym, like he's like 60 or 70, you're gonna think he's like not very good and then get on the court with him and then he'll smoke you and then ask him like how did you beat me so bad. And the reality is like the guy is probably played for like you know 234 decades

S1

Speaker 1

42:58

and

S2

Speaker 2

42:58

knows exactly what he needs to do to like even if you're young and fast and athletic, like it doesn't matter. Like you're not going to beat them because racquetball actually there is like quite a bit of strategy in it. You can't just like, if you're a first timer, you're not going to like out athlete like a guy who's played for a while, even if they do have like bad knees and like a replacement hip.

S1

Speaker 1

43:19

They don't really move around.

S2

Speaker 2

43:20

Yeah, it's like they don't have to because they just know where to hit the ball that you're not going to get to it. Oh man,

S1

Speaker 1

43:25

that's life.

S2

Speaker 2

43:26

I know.

S1

Speaker 1

43:26

And you

S2

Speaker 2

43:27

know, I think that applies to a lot of things, like especially, you know, in startups, if things are moving fast and growing fast, like, find someone that just can help you, right? Like, and has been there and done that, like, they're gonna know, they just, like, know where all the trap doors are, and like, where all the hidden things that are going to trip you up are. And so, you know, they may not know 100% of the things that you're going to run into but they can be a good resource for you and just accelerate your learning a little bit so you know once you have an opportunity to like get that kind of mentorship or help or whatever like find a find a person that can can be that for you.

S1

Speaker 1

44:05

Great. All right. Thanks for coming in.

S2

Speaker 2

44:07

Yeah.

S1

Speaker 1

44:19

Awesome. Thanks. You