<p>Wade Foster is the CEO of Zapier, a company that sits between 7,000+ apps and runs millions of automations every single day. That gives him a front-row seat to how companies are actually adopting AI, not just talking about it.</p><p>In this episode, Wade breaks down the exact decisions he made at Zapier to go from 10% AI usage to 97% company-wide, why agents and workflows are not the same thing, and what most leaders are getting completely wrong about AI fluency.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>What you&#39;ll learn:</strong></p><ul><li><p>The difference between agents and workflows (and when to use which)</p></li><li><p>What triggered Zapier&#39;s internal &quot;Code Red&quot; after GPT-4 launched</p></li><li><p>The one-week hackathon that took AI adoption from 10% to 50% overnight</p></li><li><p>The AI fluency rubric Zapier built: Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative</p></li><li><p>Why leaders who aren&#39;t using AI are the biggest bottleneck in their companies</p></li><li><p>How to measure AI ROI: floor raisers vs ceiling raisers</p></li><li><p>How AI now handles 50% of Zapier&#39;s customer support tickets</p></li><li><p>Wade&#39;s personal &quot;advisory council&quot; of AI sub-agents he uses for every major decision</p></li><li><p>Why building a company today is 10x cheaper but distribution is 10x harder</p></li><li><p>The truth about fundraising: you&#39;re selling your company, not raising money</p></li><li><p>How Zapier stayed profitable by only hiring when it hurt</p><p><br></p></li></ul><p>Guest<strong>:</strong> Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier </p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/"><u>https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/</u></a></p><p>Company - Zapier:<a href="https://zapier.com"> <u>https://zapier.com</u></a></p><p><br></p><p>Host<strong>:</strong> Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GTMnow </p><p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/"><u>https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/</u></a></p><p>Newsletter: <a href="https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com"><u>https://thegtmnewsletter.substack.com</u></a></p><p><br>Episode highlights<br>0:00 - Intro</p><p>1:13 - The Seinfeld Quote &amp; Kanye Text story</p><p>3:16 - Workflows vs. Agents: What&#39;s the difference?</p><p>6:09 - Zapier&#39;s Code Red moment</p><p>8:55 - The hackathon that moved AI adoption from 10% to 50%</p><p>12:06 - Making AI fluency a hiring requirement</p><p>13:47 - Building the AI fluency rubric</p><p>16:40 - Why leaders are the biggest AI bottleneck</p><p>18:12 - Revenue impact of going AI-first</p><p>22:09 - Would Wade build Zapier differently today?</p><p>23:20 - Is Zapier&#39;s moat at risk from agents?</p><p>24:59 - Staying profitable with minimal capital</p><p>28:37 - The riskiest contrarian bet that paid off</p><p>31:52 - Wade&#39;s 3 personal AI workflows</p><p>36:53 - Favorite books for founders</p><p><br>GTMnow is the media brand of GTMfund, sharing go-to-market insights from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by 350+ of the best GTM executives. </p><p>Subscribe for weekly episodes with the operators, founders, and investors behind the fastest-growing software companies.<br></p>