
How Zapier Reached $35M ARR - gmays
https://ryanberg.co/how-zapier-reached-35m-arr-with-this-saas-seo-strategy/
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busterarm
I remember about two years ago when I reported a bug in the Hubspot Form API
Zap where they weren't handling one of Hubspot's documented return codes
properly. Basically their zap was only handling one success code and one
failure code when actually there were two different types of success.

I documented the issue, linked Hubspot's API docs confirming it, submitted a
ticket through their normal support portal and had a confirmed bug from a
Zapier engineer within an hour. The fix was live before I came back from lunch
about an hour later.

This is why they're successful. If I submit a bug report in Blink (usually
major text rendering/CSS issues), a Google employee will look at the issue a
month later, maybe. If I submit a bug report in one of their APIs, if it isn't
Adwords and isn't customer impacting, the response is basically a middle
finger/"we will fix never".

Zapier made a lot of my contracting work way easier and often I get the client
involved and they become self-sufficient. Zapier should pay me money!
_kidding_

~~~
ec109685
Slack is also super responsive when you file a ticket and in some cases have
pushed out a change in a few hours. They accept tickets and issues from anyone
(not just admins).

I wouldn’t even know how to file a ticket with GDocs.

~~~
arsalanb
Can you explain the last sentence? Sort of blew my mind..

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Lukas_Skywalker
I believe OP meant "file a bug for GDocs", not "file a bug using GDocs".

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arsalanb
Ah, that makes sense. I was thinking of how one could file a bug using GDocs
and it was an interesting idea. Thanks!

~~~
cannonedhamster
Theoretically I think it's possible to submit bugs using GDocs especially
since you can essentially use Javascript to do so. The coding engine is pretty
powerful. I can imagine using forms to do so.

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hardwaresofton
Clickbaity title aside, Zapier is achieving $35M ARR because their product is
_amazing_. I'm infinitely suspicious of SEO articles but I'm convinced that
Zapier could have Slack'd (word-of-mouth'd) their way to where they are now.
They're in a league of their own when it comes to integration/functionality/UX
-- I don't even know who their bigger competitors are, if they exist.

The first time I saw Zapier, I got the tinge of developer/engineer/builder
envy that I get whenever I see products that just are obvious in retrospect,
and seem to be very well and flexibly implemented. I heard of it from a
forward-looking product manager I respected at a famous internet security firm
that I worked at in the past and it absolutely blew my mind (also he gave me a
short demo) because of how easy it made things for end users despite the
complexity I _know_ the must have had to deal with.

~~~
chrisweekly
I admit I haven't looked too closely, but what makes Zapier so amazing
compared to IFTTT?

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hardwaresofton
The way I see it, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT, but it's not the functionality
that separates them, it's the approach.

For me it starts with the name -- IFTTT means absolutely _nothing_ to the
average non-technical user, it sounds like alphabet soup or maybe a standards
body or something. Zapier _also_ doesn't mean anything, but it means nothing
in a easy to distinguish way from other things. The audience for IFTTT (which
is obvious once you know the acronym and makes sense) is for developers where
Zapier is generally for smart forward-looking non-technical to fully technical
people in the right domain. IFTTT might get a crazy article or two in tech-
focused publications and some fanfare from nerds but Zapier is the kind of
thing that silently chugs along to be _everywhere_ in ~5 years once product
managers/leads, managers, business analysis people get a hold of it -- and the
tech isn't even bad.

I don't work for Zapier, I don't push use or pay for their products, I have no
connection to them except realizing when I first saw it that it was a
excellent idea in a parched solution space with an above average to great
implementation & UX.

[EDIT] - Thinking about this some more, Zapier is a subset of IFTTT the
concept as in I could Zapier's functionality in the sentence "if X then Y",
but that statement actually doesn't mean anything because you can maneuver X
to be just about anything and Y to be just about anything. Zapier supports
non-trigger based workflows from what I understand and so does IFTTT... so
maybe they're more equivalent than anything with Zapier focusing on
enterprise-level polished integrations.

~~~
rahoulb
I would put it the other way round. There's stuff I do with Zapier that I
can't see how to do with IFTTT. In particular the path functionality and
Python/Javascript embedding mean I can string lots of zaps together into very
complex workflows.

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mpeg
I've been following Zapier from the sidelines for a while, and from early on I
was fascinated about the way they managed to leverage the network effect to
grow.

In retrospect it seems obvious, but they probably would't be where they are
today if they hadn't built it as an open platform (for partners developing
their own zaps) from the beginning.

Actually met two of the founders (Wade and Bryan) in mountain view when they
were based in the YC offices (5+ years ago). Sometimes it's easy to think
someone's just lucky, but in this case I think it's pure focus, talent, and a
great understanding of the acquisition sources that got them here.

Looking forward to see where they'll be in another 5 years.

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abootstrapper
“created 25,000 search optimized landing pages”

It’s garbage that this approach works for SEO. Who wakes up in the morning and
decides that creating 25k versions of the same web page is a good use of time,
automated or not. Apparently it pays off, but I don’t want to compete on who
can generate the most fluff, and it’s bogus that this behavior is rewarded.

~~~
arrel
They mention that these pages were created for every combination of “connect
service X to service Y”, which matches twhat people are actually looking for,
so I would argue this is a great use of 25K landing pages that are adding
value and being rewarded by google for doing so.

~~~
weisser
It is fantastic. I pay for Zapier and sometimes I end up on these pages when
searching simply because I was unaware of a new integration. The pages do a
fantastic job of showing people a solution they are searching for.

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jwdunne
It's funny. This happened to me yesterday. Not a new integration but I wanted
to know if I could get data from a forum into a Google sheet once a month.

Zapier landing page: Sure, just use a webhook trigger to Google sheets.

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aaronharnly
I love Zapier and we use it more and more for various bits of glue, but I
haven’t found a robust development workflow for it. As soon as you begin
editing a Zap, it turns off, which is a sort of “code it live on prod” I
haven’t done since early PHP days :)

We don’t use it for truly production-critical things, but at some point
integrations like this for CRM, support systems, etc need to be working and
can’t just turn off for 30 minutes as we hand-copy a new idea into it.

How to have a “test endpoint” for a given Zap, or to promote/copy a change
from one Zap to another — has anyone worked out a best practice for this?

~~~
cheez
Can't you duplicate the zap, edit the dupe, then replace the original?

~~~
aaronharnly
Sort of, but things like webhooks aren’t straightforward, and if you want to
(for example) receive or send events with a test area of your third party
sites, there’s not a clean way to toggle those.

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agosnell
(Note: I work at Zapier.) Thanks for the kind words, aaronharnly! You're
right, we don't have a generalized way to do that sort of thing right now, but
if you're triggering from a webhook, one option might be something like:

\- duplicate your prod zap

\- adjust the url to send a webhook to both your prod zap, and your
(duplicate) dev zap (with just a single request):
[https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-
webhoo...](https://zapier.com/help/webhooks/#triggering-multiple-webhooks-at-
once)

\- once your changes are ready, "promote" it by turning the new zap on, and
the old one off

There could be other workarounds for doing similar things, kinda depends on
the overall structure of that particular Zap. Feel free to give us a shout
anytime, and we could take a closer look at your specific setup!
[https://zapier.com/app/contact-us](https://zapier.com/app/contact-us)

~~~
aaronharnly
Thank you!

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binarynate
There's a great episode of the Indie Hackers podcast with Wade from Zapier:
[https://radiopublic.com/indiehackers/ep/s1!7cb82](https://radiopublic.com/indiehackers/ep/s1!7cb82)

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schrijver
Was tempted by their product but I had to cancel my account as their IMAP
integration was quite lackluster. Their support was prompt and courteous
though.

When setting up a basic script to save attachments to a Dropbox, two basic
thinks it could not do:

\- Mark an e-mail as read

\- Treat attachments individually (they all got dumped in a ZIP)

Zapier told me their gMail integration is better. But IMAP is the open
standard.

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donkeyd
Zapier is pretty cool, but every time I mess around with it, I end up being
held back by only being able to use two-step apps. $20 a month is too much for
just messing around with some personal stuff unfortunately. I's love a $5
personal plan that would allow me to do slightly more than the free plan, like
conditionals and more than two steps.

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mrtimo
Any guesses as to when they will be acquired and by whom? I'm wondering to
myself if the founders are interested in this... I'd like to see the product
grow, so I hope not!

~~~
ryanmercer
>Any guesses as to when they will be acquired and by whom?

Given they are entirely remote and have a pretty unique culture, I doubt they
get acquired unless it's done like Amazon did with Zappos (basically bought
them then said "keep doing whatever you're doing, we'll leave you alone").

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LiuXJ
This is a great example of pitching your product from the "Jobs to be Done"
perspective. More users (in total) will search "create Trello card from
message in Gmail" or similar than generic platform integration.

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cm2012
Zapier is a killer app for non technical marketers.

~~~
fpvracing
Would you mind elaborating?

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cm2012
It lets you connect data via clean APIs without needing to code. So new
website signups can automatically go to mailchimp, and zapier can text high
priority leads to your best salesperson, and the lead can feed into a bi tool,
etc etc.

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mattpk
I read Indie Hackers, and it seems every non-technical founder on that site
uses Zapier, and Stripe.

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mbesto
For everyone talking about how great the product is, here is my challenge to
you:

Zapier achieved $35M ARR because they _sell_ $35M worth of customers every
year and have a product that can back that sales channel up.

1\. Their SEO is on-point (search <Insert SaaS 1> integration with <Insert
SaaS 2> and you'll undoubtedly get a 1st page SERP from them

2\. Their customer service is great (from what I've read) and appears to be
very international friendly.

3\. They have good freemium hooks that get you to upgrade and clearly have A/B
tested this for conversion purposes.

TL;DR - Product alone doesn't get you $35M ARR.

~~~
TremendousJudge
I want to add that their attention towards developers is also amazing. I
developed an integration for the product of the company I work for, and they
were just great; the review process was painless and their APIs are very
clean. My only complaint is that the docs can be somewhat lacking

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falcor84
This might be a silly question, but what the hell is a $35M ARR? The
definition of ARR (Accounting rate of return) that I'm familiar with is as a
percentage

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andy_adams
Not a silly question. ARR is the sound a pirate makes when he finds $35M in
buried treasure.

~~~
carrja99
This is the best answer.

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HenryTheHorse
I'm curious - given that they support hundreds of integrations across so many
platforms, all with their own product roadmaps etc, how does Zapier actually
develop and maintain these integrations?

What happens if Google or Trello or Salesforce changes their APIs? How does
Zapier keep up?

~~~
matthewheath
We maintain the ones we built originally, but new ones are typically
maintained by the app/service in question. At some point, the question of
maintaining and updating "X,XXX" integrations with a comparatively small team
does arise, so the idea of the partner owning and being responsible for the
integration begins to make sense.

~~~
HenryTheHorse
Thanks - so the integrations could also be maintained by the partners. That
makes a lot of sense.

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wambamshazam
As a salesforce user, the price from essentials to premium is $50 a month,
time a years worth, times the number of employees. My $240/year zap handles
all the tasks, or as close to it, that premium offers. I'm saving THOUSANDS of
dollars and my SF rep is hating me right now.

Plus Zapier support has been phenomenal, albeit slow as fuck using email, they
are persistent and knowledgeable.

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z3t4
It will become harder and harder to have organic growth (vs artificial paid
for) due to these crazy SEO tactics. If you are not linking already, next time
you write a blog or article, make sure to link to all your sources and other
interesting content for further reading, as it will become harder and harder
to find stuff via search engines.

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greengrune
Zapier seems cool, but it doesn’t seem like it’s target is for “regular
people” at $240 a year.

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tonyedgecombe
It's for business, $240 is nothing to most of them, it's small enough to get
expensed.

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collyw
I had a look at it in a previous workplace. For the volumes of data that we
were looking at it came to a lot more than that. I Built an equivalent app to
join two services in a couple of days.

~~~
falcor84
Yeah, that makes sense.

Zapier makes more sense for many smaller tasks. A common example I'm familiar
with is to connect the output of a Google form with a crm search and create a
ticket to follow-up based on some filters. This is something that you can set
up on Zapier in 10 minutes, and you wouldn't want the hassle of actually
maintaining your own backend for something like that.

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nioperas06
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

