FLASHBACK: The future of remote work, juggling APIs, and dream integrations with Wade Foster of Zapier | E2221
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
Goldbelly - Goldbelly.com
Zite - zite.com/twist
Today’s show:
Today, Zapier’s a multi-billion company helping enterprises integrate AI agents and other time-saving shortcuts into their workflows… but we had the founder on TWiST when they were just getting started!
In a 2016 chat, founder Wade Foster walked JCal through their 2012 seed round, running a small entirely remote team with no HQ, the complexities of building a tool that relies on third-party APIs, and why Microsoft Office was the “Holy Grail” for his integration software.
PLUS we’ve got a new entrant in your Gamma Pitch Deck competition! Tour CEO/CTO Amulya Parmer tells us how his app is saving property managers time and grief, while eliminating “looky-loos” and increasing their “hit rate.”
FINALLY, Alex chats with Tomas Puig of TWiST 500 marketing analysis startup Alembic. It turns out, LLMs aren’t ideal for scrutinizing marketing campaigns because they lack the requisite historical data. Find out how they’re using Spiking Neural Networks (SNN) to dig deeper than GPT and Claude can go.
Timestamps:
(02:40) Amulya from Tour opens the show with praise for Jason
(03:34) Tour’s 2-minute Gamma pitch: automated property tours for managers
(06:47) Why Jason thinks Tour is an ideal tool for Gen Z
(10:01) Goldbelly - Goldbelly ****ships America’s most delicious, iconic foods nationwide! Get 20% off your first order by going to Goldbelly.com and using the promo code TWiST at checkout.
(13:32) How Tour can eliminate “looky-loos” and increase the “hit rate”
(14:38) Why Tour prices based on individual properties and apartments
(19:13) Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit every.io.
(20:23) Jason wants to sprinkle some AI into Tour
(24:29) Welcoming Tomas Puig from Alembic
(25:12) Does epic-scale brand marketing actually pay off for these brands?
(27:27) The hardest thing about being a marketer…
(28:31) Alembic’s origins: organizing huge unstructured data sets
(30:18) Zite - Zite is the fastest way to build business software with AI. Go to zite.com/twist to get started.
(31:27) Case Study: making sense of Delta’s Olympics data
(33:37) Applying simulation models and supercomputers to marketing data
(35:48) How Spiking Neural Networks (SNN) help Alembic spot trends and link causal relationships
(41:13) The key advantage of training models on private data
(43:16) Building their own clusters vs. renting
(44:41) “You don’t ask if you have Product Market Fit… You hold on for dear life.”
(46:28) Flashback with Alex and Lon to Jason’s 2016 chat with Wade Foster of Zapier
(54:48) The dangers of building atop other platform’s APIs
(01:03:00) What Zapier learned pre-pandemic about leading remote teams
(01:13:12) Why MS Office was the “Holy Grail” for early Zapier
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Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Thank you to our partners:
(10:01) Goldbelly - Goldbelly ****ships America’s most delicious, iconic foods nationwide! Get 20% off your first order by going to Goldbelly.com and using the promo code TWiST at checkout.
(19:13) Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit every.io.
(30:18) Zite - Zite is the fastest way to build business software with AI. Go to zite.com/twist to get started.
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | What do you think the future of work is going to be? Because I'm seeing that we don't need as many clerical people to run a larger and larger operation. And what will the future of work look like for those clerical people? Will they be more like developers? Is everybody going to be a developer? Because let's face it, this is like scripting. Yeah, it is, right? Like, this is kind of stuff. People get hired to write this kind of stuff today, right? Like, that's what Brian and I were getting hired to do five years ago. We were getting hired to write code that did this stuff. Yes. So now, like, a, you know, a savvy person could probably hire themselves out and pretend that they're writing code, but it's actually Zapier behind the scenes if they wanted to, right? Right. Are people doing that? |
| 0:38.0 | Yeah, some people do do that, right? |
| 0:39.6 | They, you know, say that they, you know, are going to build this stuff, and then they do it, and then they wait a week, and then tell them that they've delivered. You know, I think in the future you're going to see people just using more and more of these tools that make, I hesitate to say it's coding, but it's like quasi-coding, right? |
| 0:54.8 | Like it's just scripting. |
| 0:56.0 | Yeah, it's basic scripting. |
| 0:57.4 | Macros. |
| 0:58.0 | Yeah. tools that make, you know, I hesitate to say it's coding, but it's like quasi coding, right? Like it's just scripting. Yeah, it's basic scripting. Macros. Yeah, macros, |
| 0:59.0 | you know, that really puts that kind of power in their hand and lets the tools kind of just |
| 1:03.9 | get out of their way, right? This week in startups is brought to you by Zite. Zite is the |
| 1:09.8 | fastest way to build business software with AI. |
| 1:13.1 | Build apps, forms, websites, and portals that connect to the tools you already use. |
| 1:18.4 | Go to Zite.com slash twist and get 50% off your first project. |
| 1:22.6 | Every.io. |
| 1:23.8 | For all your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes, or other back office |
| 1:30.1 | administration needs, visit every.io and goldbelly. Goldbelly ships America's most delicious, |
| 1:37.6 | iconic foods nationwide. Get 20% off your first order by using the promo code Twist at checkout. |
| 1:45.9 | Welcome back to this Week in Startups. |
| 1:47.9 | This is Alex, and we have a packed show for you today. |
| 1:50.1 | First up, Jason and I are talking to the founder of Tour, a company that brings together |
| 1:54.6 | AI, videos, and a partner listings in one cool package I would have killed to have this company |
| 1:59.7 | back when I was in school. |
| 2:01.0 | Better late than never. |
... |
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