Zapier's white whale: Microsoft Office integration

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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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(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.

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