20VC: Scaling Zapier To $140M ARR and a $5Bn Valuation on $1.4M of Funding, What Founders Misunderstand About Fundraising & How Founders Should Think About Secondaries Today with Wade Foster, Founder & CEO @ Zapier
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 15 April 2021
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Wade Foster is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Zapier, the company that moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. Post YC in 2012, Wade raised $1.4M for the company from Bessemer and Threshold but since that round, he scaled the company to $140M in ARR and a $5Bn valuation with Sequoia and Steadfast buying out some early investors earlier this year.
In Today’s Episode with Wade Foster You Will Learn:
1.) How Wade made his way from email marketing manager to founding one of YC's most successful alum in the form of Zapier? Does Wade agree with the "fake it till you make it theory"? How does Wade advise grads on starting a company vs joining a startup vs joining an incumbent?
2.) Remote Work: Zapier has been remote since 2012, what do Zapier do very specifically that Waade believes has enabled them to be so successful remote? What did not work? What were some of the biggest challenges of scaling the team remotely? In terms of tooling, what specific tools do Wade and Zapier use to make the org as transparent as possible?
3.) In the scaling journey, what have been the most significant breakpoints in the org scaling? How has Eade scaled his style of leadership? What has been the most challenging element to scale? How does Wade structure internal meetings? Who is invited to what? What materials are shared? How are the meetings structured?
4.) Why did Wade decide not to take the venture path and scale the company from revenues? What does Wade believe so many founders misunderstand when it comes to fundraising? What does Wade believe they gained from the bootstrapped approach? Why did Wade still maintain relationships with VCs? How did he choose those he wanted to stay in touch with?
5.) How does Wade feel about his relationship to money? What does Wade think about the rise of secondaries? In what framework does Wade advise founders who have the chance to take secondaries? What is the right amount to take off the table? How does one communicate this?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Wade Foster
Wade’s Favourite Book: Harry Potter
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | All right, we are back. 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you have not checked out our |
| 0:03.9 | episode on Monday with Nikolai founder at Revolut, that is a must. But now we are joined by yet |
| 0:08.1 | another very, very special unicorn founder. He scaled his company with just $1.4 million in funding |
| 0:13.6 | to over $140 million in ARR and a $5 billion valuation. Have you guessed it? Well, I'm thrilled to welcome Wade Foster, |
| 0:25.5 | co-founder and CEO at Zapier, to the hot seat. Zapier is the company that moves info between your web apps automatically, so you can focus on your most important work. As I mentioned, |
| 0:30.4 | post-YC in 2012, Wade raised $1.4 million for the company from Bessemer and Threshold, |
| 0:35.6 | but since that round, he scaled the company to $ 140 million an ARR and a $5 billion valuation without any traditional style venture |
| 0:43.1 | rounds happening until earlier this year when Sequoia and Steadfast bought out some early investors |
| 0:47.6 | at the $5 billion reported valuation. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Jay Simons at Bond, |
| 0:52.9 | Shishir at Coda and Vlad at Webflow. |
| 0:55.0 | Some amazing questions suggestions today really did make such a difference. |
| 0:58.6 | But before we move into the episode today, did you know that more than 80% of US public stock is owned by just 10% of Americans? |
| 1:05.5 | This divide is even greater in the private markets. |
| 1:08.0 | Carter makes it as easy to issue equity to your employees as it is to |
| 1:11.6 | issue payroll and for employees as easy to accept it to. More than 16,000 companies issue equity |
| 1:17.6 | to their employees through Carter, whether you're just starting out or getting ready to go public. |
| 1:22.0 | The team at Carter can help. Learn more at Carter.com. And finally, I've always been a massive |
| 1:26.5 | history fan and so I want to talk |
| 1:28.0 | about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first |
| 1:32.9 | venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooleys form more VC funds than any other law firm in the world, |
| 1:37.8 | with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments, |
| 1:43.1 | and handle the myriad of issues that are bound to arise throughout a fund's lifetime. |
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