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

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, uh-huh. So maybe we should just go with those.

All right, so the first one was from Ben Thompson, and he asked for more detail on the pay to leave San Francisco. Yes, I think you guys called the D location, yeah. How's it going?

Well, we introduced this D location 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 anywhere. So we call it D location. This was an idea that one 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 a hundred percent 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 want to be somewhere else." So, you know, a bunch of reasons, right?

And so what this engineer on our team kind of hypothesized is 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 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 D location 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 much that I think it was in March. And the funny thing was, since then, we've seen probably about roughly about a 30 percent increase in applicants to Zapier. Wow, so pretty significant.

Yeah, we have hit with that like our roles routinely get 100 to 200 applicants. Some roles we've even had, I think our record is like 1500 applicants for one open position, and it'll signal like those are there 30 percent increase in my quality candidates.

Yes, yes, just across the board. And one of the interesting things we noticed was the applicants weren't actually from San Francisco, however, just from wherever the heck they were. And so it was clear that like offering this thing, you know, got it caught some buzz and like mainstream media, and so it kind of just elevated the profile of Zapier.

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 x values that I have. They are working on an interesting product." And so we got a lot of great applicants from outside the area. Again, so we've actually hired about 15 folks since then, and only one person from the Bay Area. She's in the process of like mulling over whether she wants to take it or not. But so we actually, I'm going to offer any because we haven't hired any folks out there.

Yeah, have you relocated then?

I went to the Bay Area through Annie. I know was moved here, so we're way up.

That's really funny. And do you guys ever do relocations other than that?

Not generally; like most folks are where they want to be or like they're head in that way anyway.

Yeah, so like that's, I mean, that's kind of the beauty of remote work is that 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 just want to explore the area because you've heard cool things. Like, it doesn't matter what the reason is, right? Like, you can do that.

And so how often are you actually interacting with that many employees here?

You guys were at about 95.

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

Well, in person, we do. So we did this thing called Airbnb 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 will Lawrence and Airbnb, will 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, 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, 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 in that much time. So we actually like really spend a lot of time with them, you know, within that first month for those first folks.

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

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?

I think it definitely helped a lot to start it 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 after 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? 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, 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 does it look like? The man that I need to do for this again or like why is this not working? Help me. Do 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. So you kind of have to get good at like, "Hey, here's like the readme for this stuff," and make sure that's all up to date and working pretty well.

So, yeah, I think had we have like started, you know, ten people in an office and then added remote folks, like we sure certainly could have gotten there. 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 in a different way, whereas we just learned it that way from the get-go.

Was there a point at which like you guys were scaling up and you're like, "Oh, we've entered like a different class of like remote team size and we have to handle things differently?"

Yeah, definitely. And it's not too different, I think from even in look it, like co-located companies have like those inflection points too, where you're like, "We need to change some stuff up because it's not working."

And so for us, like there's about three of them where we've kind of had to really not reinvent ourselves but start to rethink a few things. So the first one was around like 20 people, which was up until that point like I was the sole manager, but like not really management. Like when it's less than 20, everything kind of self-happened. So, like me and Brian and Mike, my co-founders were just kind of making sure things happened.

Once we got to about 20 or so, it's like actually there starting to be some coordination overhead. 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 in a 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 that was like the first time where I was solely managing other managers, 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.

And so how does that work then, as a remote manager of managers where you're like, "Pro-tips having maybe done it for several years now?"

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.

We like folks who are good writers and could 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 hopeful 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 back, I know, I chose to say like they had good intentions here. This wasn't like meant to be, you know, harsh to me or whatever, right?

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 to adopt some sort of like management paradigm, like how you approach management.

I think a lot of companies, at least in startups, like to try to reinvent the wheel here. I think it's not probably a great idea, especially if you're growing really fast. There's not like a lot of good, like scientific/backed research on how it would 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 can be way—you’re going to 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 thing that you're trying to bring to market.

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 they guide like 95% of what jives with us, so we were like, "We're going to 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 the folks, so that kind of raised like the organizational baseline for like your experiences after is going to be at least this good.

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, or really, really bad. We wanted folks to be at that baseline.

So we made sure like they go through like 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, you know, managing managers, I kind of know that they're doing, following our guidelines and stuff like that.

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

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 have moved in like management positions have been working at Zapier for, you know, six or twelve months, like a good chunk of time, which helps them like learn the culture.

But they also like know the product and the role and everything like really, really well, and the downside is, you know, they're our new manager, so they have to learn some of that stuff, but that's not unteachable stuff. And 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 you're 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 or like train and coach other people in the organization as well. So that’s like an interesting inflection point as well.

Okay, and you're going through that right now?

Yeah, like we've 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.

All right, so that, so Ben asked like a multi-part question, and like many of these questions were common across Twitter. Yeah, so they want to ask you about raising money, so you guys are like famous or infamous for doing YC, raising some money, and then never raising money again.

Yeah, like I'm going to combine a couple questions here, so another person, Matt Sherman, who actually wanted you to come on the podcast from the Outer Cut Out Set, he basically said, "Why did you guys choose to go into YC if you weren't planning to raise a lot of capital after, and maybe you were planning to and like you didn't decide?"

Yeah, um, 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 SAS 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. 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 shouldn't—you should chat with them," even when you're really, really small like we were at the time, and no one really had any sort of reason, outside validation reason to believe in us at other than like, "Hey, they seem like they're building a cool product."

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. And then, you know, afterwards, we did take a little bit of money because when it's just going to start it, like things cost money. And like if you don't have anything, 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.

Delivering 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.

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

Yeah, 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 are doing like freemium, it's a bad idea generally from bootstrapped 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. So, yeah, like allowed us to experiment with a business model a little bit.

Okay, and so why did you choose to not continue to raise money?

I mean, we never needed to, is 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 bootstrap or, you know, or it's like VC," and there's like some identity involved in it, which I think when you like start to put your own identity in like, "Well, I'm a bootstrapper, I'm a VC," things 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 shouldn't have to use it. 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 were able to figure out the business model and our growth rates were working just fine, 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 like our ability to grow the company.

So we always said, "Well, we'll just keep growing it how we're going in." 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?" What are your, do you have like a mental model to advise people on that?

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? There's some products that, yeah, probably going to lend itself more towards that. Like, you know, pure enterprise plays sometimes take a little while to develop and you're going to need more capital. Ops games, 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.

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 having to raised a single dime, they have dozens of well-funded, super well-funded public companies that are direct competitors and still MailChimp takes the takes it home as the winner of that market.

So there's a lot of these phrases that people say like, "Oh, winner-take-all money, Marky, you better raise a bunch of money," they're just kind of untrue. You really need to like look at your market and just understand it really well, and you know 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 most it's going to help you build your company.

And if money isn't the thing that's going to help you do it, you need to figure out what is going to help you kind of build your moat and help you grow your company. And so then how do you, how do you better—I mean, define like a winner-take-all market for sure. Like, why was MailChimp, you know, possible?

Well, so like MailChimp isn't in a winner-take-all, right? Marty, 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, and this often, often happens in like B2C market. Though, 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, 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 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, 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 efficacy, that's probably going to be a pretty special thing, and it's worth trying to figure one out, but it's not a necessity to build a good company.

Hmm, and so looking back on—I'm kind of like using YC as a vehicle into the Bay. Was that helpful for you?

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, update, 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.

And, you know, we just kind of tried to go through like their typical front, you know, they had an email or 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, I think we got in touch with one other like frontline person 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. And then we got into YC, and one of the first things I did was, you know, email the folks in PG, and was like, "Oh yeah, we can help with that." And found a, you know, like a company they'd acquired, like their CEO, and like I had an intro to like a high-level VP like in two days.

And, you know, that week it was like, "Oh yeah, this is great. We should definitely be doing something with this." 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 it existed.

Hmm, and so what do you advise founders who are starting companies, you know, in Missouri or, you know, in other countries?

Yeah, what do you tell them? What are your tips?

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 people want, right? So figure out, you know, what it is that people want, figure out what they're going to pay for, and just make them incredibly happy.

And 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, you know, 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 unlike 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. Like those are generally like the four things; if you do those pretty well, like you're going to have some level of success. You may not be like a breakaway success because a lot of that stuff depends on like timing and luck and market and factors and things like that, but generally if you do those four 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.

Hmm, 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.

Yeah, well, I think one of the things that, you know, perpetuates this myth a little bit is just kind of the way the media cycle what works is, you know, 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. And a good proxy often is, you know, whereas the venture-funded companies are happening, and venture-funded companies 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 very companies, and so the media ends up perpetuating kind of this myth that the great companies are in the valley that's obviously on, you know, there's a lot of stereotypes involved 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 is perpetuating kind of a myth, hmm.

And as being here, change your product all that much because you guys started out basically consulting for other people. You were doing these integrations by hand, yep, and then you're like, "Oh, what if we just made it easier for everyone to do all these integrations?"

From a product standpoint, I know it's not changed, okay. And so what has changed since being here?

And I mean those relationships, right? And we mentioned the end of the YC connection, you know, from forgetting 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.

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, it could be somewhere else, and it wouldn't really matter too much.

And then how do you guys think about competitors? Is like you’ve said, you know, you could have built this company with that, necessarily raising any money? Yep, that means other people might be able to jump in and do the same thing.

Yeah, yeah. What do you guys look out for?

Well, I think the biggest thing is like figure out what you're like competitive advantages 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 built 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, 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 for most people it's figuring out what it is that makes you like makes you're, you're the reason why people choose your product. Look, what is it the reason that they choose your product and like use that to help lock out other folks and then make sure that you are indeed the best product and value on the market for your customers that you want to serve, right?

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

Well, for us, like, you know, we've historically nailed our—like our best customers have been in SMB, and so we've done a really good job there. Now we're working a lot harder on, you know, we launched a teams product in March, and so we're starting to figure out like 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, you know, those are things that we start to think about, 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 that beer does, yeah, wake up." 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, well that stuff—this is where like, you know, having a product that solves like a very specific problem helps, and this is where the freemium business model helps a lot because people can self-serve, try out your products, figure out what they like about it. And then you can use the person who's already adapted it as a way into your organization, and they can be like your champion for you.

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

You know, conversely, what's been difficult about getting into these enterprises?

Well, I mean there's just like a lot of bureaucracy around it, right? And I'm older and right, so 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 when it boils down to.

Right?

Okay, so Matt had another question, it's another location question actually. So what advice do you have for a founder who's building a billion-dollar company in a city where no one has done it?

For, I mean the biggest challenge, I mean, is tough for me because I haven't built a bike company yet either. So, but my instinct is that the thing that you're going to struggle with maybe is as you're 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? Is there enough sales talent? Can you train?

If not, can 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 like look at the unit economics of a town that's maybe, you know, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand people, like 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.

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 there, the talent there.

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

Our preference has definitely been historically to just work with senior folks. Like 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.

You're going to want to find ways to handle that. So like for example, you know, we hire ambitious folks in Dorset fourteen who often have experience and are senior for that role. Yeah, but oftentimes they still have even bigger ambitions still.

And so, you know, one 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 we made sure the engineering manager knew that, 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; it's going to make this stuff a little easier for you. And, you know, these are the benchmarks that will let you know like you're ready to make that jump."

So maybe we just like worked with them to figure out like here's the plan that you need to set up, and you know from there, it's kind of 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.

I think that's like just a discussion you need to have with every person that's on your team. It's 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 the projects that we need to make the organization successful?" And is that like public in any way within the organization? Is like, you know, these are your objectives and goals for this year?

We haven't gotten like super rigid about like, you know, okay, OKRs or creepy I's or things like that. We do have them, but they're, you know, each manager talks with our, you know, person on their team directly and sets them up kind of for them.

And so they're a little bit fluid, and we're working on like solidifying like a process for that because I do think it's a good idea.

Well, because you guys, 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 one thing and you don't know it, and maybe my manager is cool with it, but you're like, "Why is Craig doing this in the corner?"

Right? Like, guy doing.

Okay, so yeah, still working on that. And then 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?

Our retention is like incredibly high, so we actually just ran the numbers last week and like ninety-seven percent retention for over the last twelve months.

Okay, 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 building the product and getting things done.

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 they're the right people, and that they're working on the right things, and that they have the right plans in place for them to be successful just as people too.

Well, so yeah, then how do you keep track of like that the happiness of people on like a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month?

Yes, 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 the relationship between like manager and the person. So, you know, they do like a weekly one-on-one with them system taken in, and like how 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.

They have some of those types of questions, and then if we do other things too, just like encourage like, you know, good cross-company communication, camaraderie, stuff like that. So we have we just have a thing called pair buddies. So every week, you randomly get paired up with someone across the organization; you'll just jump on like a video conference call and talk to them.

Like you're kind of like a, you know, like a coffee outing, I guess, that you might do at another org, you know, just talk about whatever, right? It doesn't have to be work-specific. It's super informal, and talk about family, hobbies, whatever, right? That 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 going to have like water cooler talk and like talk at lunch and all that sort of stuff. It's 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, so like I think a couple weeks ago someone on our support team wanted to do like is the end of Friday afternoon on like Pacific time zones like everybody in the company is basically it's soon to be or almost weekend time and they're like, "Let's do like a random gift 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 gift of yourself dancing to this thing." It's like about a dozen people like uploaded random gifts, greatest Slack that we're just, you know, for this song.

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 like a place where you can enjoy yourself a little bit. Like let's get our stuff done and enjoy our time here, right?

Totally. And so, um, so I guess slightly going off-topic, like almost every interview I've listened to or seen with you is like remote work, it's like not raising money, it's very location about 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.

I think that there's probably like one thing I don't often talk about is 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 two and a half years ago now. I was playing college a little but just like for fun and then I realized about, you know, two years in, two or three years in, in Zapier I like had stopped exercising, and I was starting to put on some weight like, you know, founder 15. Though, in my case, it might have been 20 or 25. It was like all right, let me get this under control, so let's start playing racquetball.

Actually, it's like, yeah, I was like, "Oh, I actually enjoyed doing this." It's like, "Okay, now how can I—once you start getting into it—it's like this is good exercise; 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 want to 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 each day?"

And so, you know, this for me with racquetball like, "All right, I need to just play a lot. That's like the biggest thing." So I started playing like three or four times a week. I found a coach that like was teaching me a few things, and like every time I would get out once a week, he would teach me one new thing.

And it was like, "All right, I'm just going to practice that one 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.

And I think this kind of like approach to learning really helps in all sorts of things. So like this is something I hope talked to life 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 one 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, five a day. They've only done 25.

So now you have, you know, seventy-five more interactions of learning than the person who only did five. So it's like if you can get, you know, enough like reps in basically, that's going to really accelerate your learning. So I think a lot of folks spend too much time on being perfect, perfectionist about things, and they forget like a lot of times if you just do it enough times, you're just going to get better at it because you've done it.

So that's like one thing that I think is like a lot of founders 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 going to get better at it.

Hmm, that's great advice in there because there's often such little downside.

Yeah, like especially in software. Like maybe you're shooting up rockets, and that's one. Yeah, right? But like, you know, if you miss a line of form or something, it doesn't matter early on, right? You have barely any customers, like whatever, right?

Like, you know, and you'll figure it out, right? Like it's not going to be the end of the world, you'll have another opportunity to do something else. Are you trying to learn anything else right now?

Oh, I'm still trying to get better at racquetball, but that's a big one. 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.

In fact, one of the things that I always like, I like to do is about every six months, I'll go seek out founders who are basically a year ahead of me and just ask like, "What did you do in your last year? Like what was the smartest thing you did in the last year? What was the dumbest thing you did in the last year? 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, or, and sometimes you can't. Sometimes it's just like, you know, all right, yeah, that it's like you just know like it's coming, right?

Well, okay, yeah, share some with them. What do you expect? What's coming down the pike?

Well, you know, I think, you know, one of the interesting things 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.

And the people that you've worked with, that's just something that I think a lot of folks have realized, like some people thrive in smaller organizations, some people are better in bigger organizations, and there is a Venn diagram overlap where people are successful in both and can scale and go the distance, but that's not always the case.

And so thanks, that's the thing that, you know, we've been lucky to have really good retention rates, but it'll be interesting to see like how far out we can push that, you know, given that this kind of phenomenon exists where like people, you know, end up going out, so they're like decide like I just like being in smaller organizations. So like that's one thing that I've kind of got like in the back of my head or my heart.

And how are you going to like, you know, handle some of this stuff?

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

Oh my goodness, probably racquetball. I don't know anything about racquetball, so, uh, get fine—like find like the old guy at the gym. Like he's like 60 or 70, you're going to 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's probably played for like, you know, two, three, four decades and 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—unlike if you're a first-time, you're not going to like out-athlete a guy who's played for a while even if they do have like bad knees and like a relationship, and they don't really move around.

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

Oh, I know, and I, you know, I think that applies to a lot of things. Like you 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 going to know—they just like know where all the trapdoors are and like where all the hidden things that are going to trip you up are. And so, you know, they may not know a hundred percent 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 person that can be that for you.

Great! All right, thanks for coming in.

Yeah, awesome! Thank you!