How AI changed Zapier's culture

Wade Foster is the co-founder and CEO of Zapier. In this episode, Wade shows how he uses meeting transcripts, Zapier agents, and even Grok to analyze company culture, evaluate interview candidates, and source talent from unexpected places. He explains why CEOs need to lead by example when it comes to AI adoption and shares practical workflows that any executive can implement to make hiring more effective and efficient.

What you’ll learn:

1. How to use meeting transcripts to extract your company’s “unspoken culture” and compare it against your stated values
2. A workflow for creating AI interview evaluators that assess candidates against your job descriptions and company values
3. How to use Zapier agents to provide objective feedback on candidate interviews while checking your own biases
4. Why CEOs should participate in AI “hackathons” and “show and tells” rather than just delegating AI adoption
5. A surprising technique for using Grok to find “diamonds in the rough” talent outside traditional recruiting channels
6. How AI enables companies to complete tasks that were previously not economically viable

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This entire episode is brought to you by:

Brex—The intelligent finance platform built for founders

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Wade Foster

(02:32) Zapier’s AI adoption

(06:50) Creating AI fluency rubrics

(08:37) Using Granola to extract company culture from meeting transcripts

(10:49) Practical use cases for company culture rubrics

(13:38) Building an AI interview evaluation agent in Zapier

(16:50) Using Copilot to improve agent prompts

(18:49) Ideas for enhancing the interview agent

(22:31) Mistakes people make when using agents

(25:11) Using Grok to find talent on social media platforms

(33:39) Recap of AI workflows for recruiting and hiring

(34:40) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Tools referenced:

• Zapier: https://zapier.com/

• Zapier Agents: https://zapier.com/agents

• Granola: https://granola.ai/

• Grok: https://grok.x.ai/

• ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/

• Copilot: https://copilot.microsoft.com/

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Other references:

• Zapier values: https://zapier.com/about

• How Zapier’s EA built an army of AI interns to automate meeting prep, strengthen team culture, and scale internal alignment | Cortney Hickey: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-zapiers-ea-built-an-army-of-ai

• How this CEO turned 25,000 hours of sales calls into a self-learning go-to-market engine | Matt Britton (Suzy): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-this-ceo-turned-25000-hours-of

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Where to find Wade Foster:

Zapier: https://zapier.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/

X: https://twitter.com/wadefoster

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Where to find Claire Vo:

ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/

Website: https://clairevo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/

X: https://x.com/clairevo

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co.