Business Systems Explored

Vinay:

Hi everyone, Vinay here from Business Systems Explored. We've got another exciting episode today. I'm here with my co-host.

Tony:

Tony Brown. Vinay, how are you doing?

Tony:

Well, we've got comfortable now so we can start to let it all hang out. As you said, another great episode. This one is going to be a very special one. We've got Alison Groves on the line from Zapier and I can say Zapier, can't I Alison?

Alison:

Yeah, you got it right the first time, which very rarely happens. That's good Tony.

Tony:

I've heard a lot of people say Zeppier.

Vinay:

Yeah, I hear that a lot.

Alison:

I'm from the southern part of America and so it makes more sense to say Zeppier. That's how our accent would work but no, Zapier rhymes happier. That's how we tell people to pronounce it.

Vinay:

Well you think about it like Zap. You don't say Zep.

Alison:

Right.

Tony:

Yeah, that's it. That's it, yeah.

Vinay:

Awesome. I know that you're responsible for handling the partner relationships but what exactly is your role at Zapier? Then maybe could you just give us introduction into ... Well, let me just start with that, an introduction to Zapier the product and what it actually does and then a little bit about your role.

Alison:

Zapier the product is actually about as simple as it gets, however in that simplicity comes an amazing amount of flexibility and complexly and however you want to look at it but at it's core Zapier is essentially a tool that allows you to connect other tools together. One of our more famous examples would be connecting a fore map like Wufoo to something like Google Sheets or Smartsheets or some other tool like that so you could automatically send any form entries that you get whether it's from a stand alone form or your website or whatever that might be. All that data will actually send automatically to that spreadsheet and create a new spreadsheet row. That's one of our most popular examples. It's very universal but that really can be applied to just about anything.

As of today, and I didn't look today but as of the last couple of days we are at about 575 different apps that connect to Zapier. If you take that one example, the possibilities are we're almost endless. There are actually 4.3 million different possibilities that you could do with Zapier, but if we'd scale it down to it's core that's what really what it is. We're taking information or data from one app that you use and sending it over automatically to another app that you use that cuts down on an enormous amount of time doing any sort of manual labor or remembering to do things. Yeah, that's really Zapier at it's core.

Tony:

I think that the number of connections you can make, the number of Zaps you can do, it just shows why this app is mentioned so many times on this podcast. It's definitely in the top three mentions in all the episodes we do, so that just explains why. Just tell us a little bit then about your role as Head of Partner Marketing.

Alison:

Sure. Actually I'm coming up on close to two years at Zapier. I actually started on the Support Team, which I highly recommend for anyone who, and I've been working with software for almost a decade now. I highly recommend anyone who's either looking get into it or that has a passion for it to really start on the Support side because you learn so much, so quickly about the app that you are working with, other apps around there, that type of thing. I actually started on the Support Team and did Support for about six months. In that time Zapier was growing by leaps and bounds literally, they were just doubling up. Then we decided we needed a little more help on the marketing side of things. At the time there was just my team mate Danny was the only one running things and so I moved over to help him with things and then we added to the team a little bit more.

I've been doing the partner side for probably about ten months or so. Now it got to that point where we were growing so rapidly that we needed someone to really spearhead partners as they launch on to Zapier. When I started at Zapier, actually to take it back even a step further, there was no partner or platform team at all and so that team has grown as well. We're taking it from nothing to on boarding a new app into the Zapier Eco system every single day. It's very different. I have a very unique role, I think. It's part Project Manager, part Community Builder, part Support Team, part Writer, there's just anything you can think of that I would incorporate building relationships, making sure that our partners have the best experience With Zapier as they can. That's where I fit into the picture.

Tony:

When you say partner, just to put it into context, we're not talking about affiliates here we're talking about other such products, other apps, et cetera that are integrated into Zapier.

Alison:

Yeah, that's correct. We refer to them internally as partners. It's something that we actually struggle with, like the right word to actually describe what it is but I think that it's the right word. Our whole success is based on the success of our partners and we want them to have the best experience. We all their users to have the best experience because we know that we add that layer on top of so many other different apps and so we want that experience to be the best that it can be for everyone.

Vinay:

Yeah, I know. Absolutely. We're obviously a partner of Zapier by integrating and it's been fantastic for our users. They've been getting a lot of value out of it and it also helps actually with [reducing trend 00:05:48] and it also helps with actually acquiring users as well because a lot of people actually want a way to be able to use the existing apps they already use. That's a big shift that's happening in today's business world and this shift in systems, coming out of the enterprises and into startups and smaller businesses. You see tools like Zapier, we all know this kind of stuff, [inaudible 00:06:10], middle ware, [arco fusion 00:06:12], that kind of stuff which is the real enterprise grade middle ware type product which is like a company buying their own Zapier that they use just inside to company.

Like the firewalls of the company so that they let all the apps talk to each other. In today's world where everybody is, especially in SMBs and then the enterprise's moving that way as well, where everybody is using such products there needs to be some type of way to really make all those different kind of isolated tools talk to each other and Zapier basically that's what it will do without [inaudible 00:06:40], right?

Alison:

Yeah, and it's been really, really humbling to see the transition from ... A year ago we were probably about, not only half the size internally but half the size externally as well. We've gone from this place where people would use it and passionate about it but only for really specific things. Now I've seen people describe Zapier is the product hunt for new apps and that type of thing. We have a lot more people who are using us for app discovery and I hear from some of our more passionate users, they won't try or buy another app unless it connects with Zapier. It's been really, really cool to be a part of that and see that happen as we evolve and grow.

Vinay:

That's awesome.

Tony:

I can definitely testify to that in terms of finding new apps just through searching on Zapier and even just going through the, is it the Zapbook?

Alison:

Mh-mmm.

Tony:

Just seeing the different options of how to integrate and what you can actually do with it. I'm at risk of spending hours sometimes to the point where I've actually outsourced it to a VA to say, go through the Zap book and see what we could use in our business.

Alison:

Well, anytime you need a recommendation Tony, you can come to me and I'll put you at the top of my list.

Tony:

Excellent. Thank you. I'll [inaudible 00:08:00] from that.

Alison:

Yeah, really.

Vinay:

Awesome. Let's talk about this. That's the fundamental part of your whole product is basically getting these partners on board, getting them to integrate with Zapier, and keeping that relationship tight. Making sure that integration doesn't break, making sure that you're talking to each other. I guess, the start of that is actually finding these partners. How do you go about finding new partners to integrate with Zapier? Maybe now I feel like you might be at a tipping point where you have most of that coming inbound but maybe those on [inaudible 00:08:30] you did earlier on to find these partners and maybe give some of those tips to our listeners if they were looking to build up on a program themselves.

Alison:

I would say we are so extra-ordinarily fortunate because I would've bet and I don't do numbers very well, but I'd say at least 95% if not more is now inbound which is really, really incredible. It's to the point where we don't have quite the amount of time and resources at the moment to put forth that more help on our external looking for things, although we definitely do, one of my more immediate team mate lives in Wellington New Zealand actually. Not only is he literally on the other side of the world but he is in tune with a certain apps that might be used in that specific part of the world or whatever. He comes to us from zero as well.

Everyone has their own little niche that they'd be either from previous jobs or just their passions, what they like doing. We do occasionally go out and talk to people and bring them on board but a very, very large amount of them come to us, which is we're very, very fortunate for that to happen. No matter what happens, either you come to us or we come to you, the process is virtually the same. We're lucky in that regard.

Vinay:

Was it always that case? Where you had 95% inbound or in the early days where there a few bigger companies you had to go after them aggressively?

Alison:

Yeah, definitely and I wasn't part of it in before times, as I like to call it. The first I'd say probably 100 or so apps on Zapier all came, we went out and, not necessarily acquire them but we actually built that integration. All the usual suspects in the [sas world 00: 10:18] the Google's, the Twitter's, that type of thing. Then right before I started actually, I think it would have been the beginning of 2014, we decided ... The amount of time that we spend actually building these integrations is time that we can spend on our own infrastructure, so why don't we give people the ability to build these integrations themselves? We actually built our developer platform and so that's how most people come to us now. We make it extremely easy for you to build out an integration. In fact, I can read a minimal amount of HTML, just enough to get in trouble, enough Java Script to get in trouble, and I can build out Zapier integrations.

We made that shift, so it wasn't us spending 100% of our time building out these integrations. That way we could bring the partners in, bring those integrations in, let everyone be more part of the experience. If you're the one who actually builds out the integration, you have a lot more invested in it. We can work out the [kinks 00:11:23] before they go live. You have context over something and your API more than we do. About the beginning of 2014, that shift happened away from the giant apps that started Zapier that we would build the integration for to allowing those developers and other apps to do that themselves.

Tony:

What were some of those early, like you mentioned joint apps? What were some of the apps you had on board?

Alison:

In the very beginning, oh man, I would to have to actually go look. We have so many apps. If I was a betting woman I would say things like Trello, and are they enough? Not something like Slack which came in later and it has actually built on our developer platform but anything that would ... I bet if you imagined it as power trues, the Google's, the Facebook's, those types of really large apps ...

Vinay:

Salesforce, Microsoft ...

Alison:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Salesforce, JIRA ...

Tony:

[inaudible 00:12:23], was that later on?

Alison:

Yeah, you know what, that probably was a very early one. I'd have to ask our CTO who built everything from scratch what were the first apps they did but I imagine it was in that world because at the very beginning we have to get people to understand the concept and that really only happens with those really big apps. Then actually a lot of it was also done around our very first customer who came to our CEO Wade with a couple of things he needed help automating and it span out from there. The very beginning definitely had some ...

Vinay:

Was that Andrew from Mixergy?

Alison:

It was, yeah, yeah.

Vinay:

I read that story somewhere.

Alison:

It's a really cool story. As a people customer centric person, that makes me so happy that the earlier days of Zapier were, and they still are, but those very first days were literally trying to help someone solve a problem.

Tony:

Wow. You say now an absolute 95% of the partners you find are inbound? You must have a quite tight screening process and a criteria for how you get these partners on board. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Alison:

Yeah, we have a pretty stringent process and above all else the process is to make utterly sure that everyone has the best experience at Zapier that they can. We want the mechanisms to make sense. Zapier's broken into two things. We've got Triggers and Actions. When one thing happens we're going to send this information somewhere else. We want that to make sense. We have a fairly honed process. It is actually all documented and by the time someone gets to us and by that ...

Tony:

Sorry, I know Vinay wants to ask the question, what are used to document it, but we will skip that.

Alison:

What are we using for documentation?

Tony:

Yeah.

Alison:

Oh, probably in a in house built CMS.

Tony:

Sorry, carry on.

Alison:

No, no, it's fine. By the time someone comes to us and triggers off our own internal automation and process for approval, so to speak, they've gone through the whole thing. The integration has been built, they've had a couple of people use it. You can't even apply for what we call Global Status on Zapier which means eventually your app will be available to everyone. We don't even let you apply for that until you have ten people using the app. We're pretty strict on those types of things because again, quality is our number one thing. If people aren't successful there's a good chance they'll probably not be that successful inside the app itself as well, so we want to make sure that that happens. Once they've got the app finished and they've got a couple of people using it, then it kicks off an internal process on our side where we work with that app and that developer to get the app fully, not only just out there in our Eco System, but out there in the bigger community public, so to speak.

Tony:

If an app was disapproved, if they didn't meet the criteria. What happens then? Is there a support process to bring them up to speed, to give them recommendations with the process?

Alison:

When someone applies for what we call Global Status, so that would be anyone like your intention ... Because we have a lot of people who build out apps just to either use themselves or you only let a small amount of people use them and there's tons of that. There's probably three times that amount than there are actually live for the public to use but once someone gets to that point, they actually in our platform Eco System, once they apply for Global Status, that actually triggers an automation on our side and opens a ticket and help scout which is how we do all of our communication. Then one of my team mates on the platform team, so it'd be either Tony, Ben, or Bruno, or Jason, go through the app and work with developer until we can get it to a place where we can set it free, so to free.

There are the occasional times when, I hesitate to use the word reject, but we go back to the developer and be like, you know what, this might not be the most compelling use case. It could be really confusing. Why don't we just leave this app and invite only mode. You can share it with people but we're just not going to put it out to our whole Eco System. That happens very, very rarely but other than that, we will fully support anyone who wants to come in, build that integration. We'll work with them until we get it to that point where everything's good.

Vinay:

Nice. You mentioned that you've got a few Triggers and that you use help scout and then basically you go back and forth with the partner until the app goes live. From when the globalization goes live that means everybody in the directory, everybody that uses Zapier can now see this app and then the real marketing starts, right? That's when you actually need to start drive engagement into that particular [inaudible 00:17:52], right? I guess that's how it has to be called? Which is that particular hook?

Alison:

Right, right. Internally, we have a pretty ... We've been working on it for a while but it used to be working well. We've got our own little process that we do. Once it's done, we have too many things that we ask our partners to do ...

Vinay:

Can we break down what you do internally?

Alison:

Yeah, yeah. Like I said earlier, once a new partner, a app, however you want to look at it, applies to be global on Zapier, again that triggers, a health scout ticket is created, and then a [travel 00:18:25] card is created. We have this open system where depending on where you are and our development team where they are and their days there, processes, whatever, they can come in and pick up new apps as they come in to work with those apps and basically see them all the way through. We've got 35 point checklist we go through with every single new partner. They are all development things. I don't touch those. I see them and I see as apps get closer to being completed. That's when I start paying attention to them.

Once they meet all those criteria, we will send them, and in fact all this is, we've got [can 00:19:08] responses for everything. Like I said, we've got this down to a pretty good science just to make sure that everyone gets the same message. If we didn't have a process, non of us would be around anymore because there's so many ... We're dealing with anywhere between 40 and 60 apps at any given time, so, yeah, we strayed from any sort of process, it would not be a good time. Once they're done, once they meet that criteria and we say, okay, you are good. You're good for the whole of Zapier, we let them out into the wild in a what we call our betaface and then we give them a couple of weeks to complete two things for us. That would be help documentation. We give our partners actually a chance to write their own help documentation for Zapier so they can put in whatever needs to be known about their app. It's so much better for them to do it because there's ...

Vinay:

They [inaudible 00:20:08] cases.

Alison:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one knows your app better than you and so we want to give people as much ownership over that as we can to really understand things work and what should be expected and that type of thing. We have partners do that and then we also have them create what we call Shared Zaps. That allows them to create, I don't know if any of you are really familiar with this, but create their own use cases and really sell the automations to not only interested users but any new user who might find them. Then we can actually take those automations and embed them anywhere we want to. That's probably a whole different conversation, but once those two things are done, either myself or one of my other team mates will hand off back and forth to walk people through that process.

Then it gets completely put onto my play. That developer goes off to work on whatever. Next app comes along on the development side of things and then I take over and work with that partner to get things fully launched publicly onto Zapier. There's a whole lot other checklists we work through there. We've got a process that has several different components to it and all kind of, not necessarily overlaps on itself but with that many pieces of the puzzle moving at all times. We have learned to be flexible in our rigid process, that's for sure.

Vinay:

What type of activity would take place once it gets onto your plate?

Alison:

At that point I take over and most of the time I've actually already talked to the developer in  one way or another. If there are questions that don't require real technical knowledge, then I'll answer that in my almost Project Management role of getting these apps on board. Once they are fully out there then we start talking about all things, marketing. Because there's so much that you can do with Zapier and because it is so overwhelming, we've basically boiled things down to three or four successful things that you can do to really spread the word. The two things that we noticed works the best is when people put those automations or those Shared Zaps embed them directly into their app because they've already put this work into it and we know that using automations helps reduce [trend 00:22:43], Vinay said that earlier today.

I help walk them through that and then also talk to people about doing things like sending emails, getting integration pages if they don't have them up on their side and doing some announcements. Usually the email falls into that, so email, blog post, whatever that might be. Everything again on my side is tailored what that app I, what they do and what's going to make the most sense for them from a marketing perspective. Like I said, since we know that Zapier can be really, really overwhelming we try and make it as formulaic as possible so people can just easily get into it, understand what's been successful in the past and run with it.

Vinay:

What have been some of the challenges with bringing on new partners, educating them and making this whole announcement transition smooth? What have been some of the biggest hurdles that you've had to overcome in building this process?

Alison:

The biggest challenge for me personally, I'm not sure if my other team mates would. I'm sure we all have our own specific challenges but for me it is when there's more people involved, it becomes a bit trickier to get things across the finish line so to speak. There will be some apps where their very early stages maybe they only have three or four employees and the founder is the one who builds the integration and also the one who wants to talk about marketing so there's no transition there, right? There's someone who has started this and they're going to see it through. They have all the context. They know what's going on. They've put the work into it so they want to see that it'd be successful on the other side.

On the other side of that spectrum is maybe a bigger company that has a lot of employees, and the departments might not necessarily speak to each other. You've got a developer who's built this integration and then we ask for, okay, who should we talk to to do a little bit of marketing and make sure that we can get this out, their users know about it. I get tossed into someone's plate and they're like, I don't know what any of this is. The process I would say would start all over again, educating them what Zapier is, and so those are hurdles that are on a case by case basis. Probably the one that I struggle with the most is not only with the amount of apps that we're working with at any given time but just trying to figure out how we're going to make those hand offs as seamless as possible and what's going to be the best way to do that.

Vinay:

Awesome.

Tony:

As the partner marketing person, how closely do you work with the content marketing team? The Zepier, Zapier, I keep saying Zepier. The Zapier blog, in terms of content it's so useful. I'm scrolling through an article now and it's never ending. In terms of the amount of [Leo hacks 00:25:44] on things you can do with different apps and also the mentions of the apps, or the platforms it's never ending. How closer do you work with the content team?

Vinay:

We almost kind of exist in different worlds and I don't mean that in a bad way. We have our own thing going and it works. I have three main team mates and we have two more who have just started and they'll get more involved as well but Danny who runs all of our marketing and then Joe and Matt, they are the three that kind of own that blog. They're all former journalists, that's their world and then I have my own blog off to the side where we announce anything new that's happened on Zapier. The blog that I own is strictly product focused and the blog that they take care of and maintain and write for is more of our helpful type of things. We've tried in the past to maybe combine those up a little bit but we feel really passionate about keeping the two things separate.

We feel very strongly about producing as high quality content as we can. It's not really Zapier related. It's more, or at least product related. It's more like, here's the problem that we see a lot of people looking to solve. Here's some ideas that you can solve it. I honestly don't have a whole lot to do with the main blog. In fact I can't even tell you what they're working on for right now. Most of the time I learn the day a post is published what they have done. Because I have to create so much of my own content on the product side of things. We live in our own little worlds but it works. Because everyone knows the new apps that are coming to Zapier. We talk a lot about that but they've definitely got their own thing going on and it's really special to watch because they're very, very good at what they do.

Vinay:

One thing I want to touch on a little bit because it does definitely tie into the part of marketing. At least what I've seen from my experience going through the process is around the SEO Strategy.  I don't know if that is something that you were part of designing but like you mentioned you have the Shared Zaps and so maybe you could explain this because you're obviously more detailed than me. Every time a new app comes on the directory, you guys automatically generate a series of learning pages around the different Actions and Triggers and content that maybe you even make us write, I don't even remember, about the app.

You generate a series of learning pages and then you also have widgets for the Shared Zaps that have back links to go back to the learning pages and then through the promotion of encouraging us to blog about you, that naturally led us to link back to those pages as well and now all those pages ranked for [inaudible 00:28:41] process rating other apps. To me it seems like a [inaudible 00:28:45] genius SEO Strategy. Maybe I don't know if talk about that in a little bit more detailed. Give some of the readers or the listeners ideas?

Alison:

I can't take any credit for that. Our CTO is quite the SEO [nut 00:28:57], basically originally writing the infrastructure for Zapier that was just the natural thing to do. I personally do have an SEO background. My last gig was at an SEO app, an app called Raven Tools app. I lived and breathed SEO especially when building for many years. That whole thing has evolved so greatly but we do understand that it's all about these apps that are on Zapier and making sure that if someone's looking for something, that we can help them find it. If you're looking for a specific thing, yeah, Zapier is probably going to come up page one for any given app at our Eco System. It's really all about, any of those pages that you land on, are not only going to lead you back to that app but they're going to be extremely helpful in not only explaining what that app does but also kind of helping you integrate it in the other parts of your life. I think that's a really awesome thing.

One thing that I don't think a lot of people understand is just how important, not only in the content of the pages, but the slug of URL and so we make sure that every landing page that's built for these single automations or we call them Shared Zaps. The content of the page is very all unique. We're probably pushing 10,000 of these individual learning pages and every single one of them has completely unique copy on them and they mention the app and the app is in the slug of the URL as well. Those are things that we keep in mind when we're doing this because we want to make sure that these pages rank well because again every app that is a partner with us is a part of the thing. You've got your app but you've also got this Zapier connection that makes your app accessible to 550 other apps, so that's just the way that goes.

If I was giving SEO advice to anyone doing any marketing like that it would be to make sure that the slugs of your URLs make sense, for key words that are important to you, what is it that you want to be helpful and that that content on the page is completely unique. Because we could very easily create a template and find and replace apps and that triggers actions and just let that go and that definitely get flagged immediately.

Vinay:

Talk about that for a second. For us, I don't remember actually, could you remind me. Did we actually submit some content to you about processing?

Alison:

You did, yeah. That's part of our process of taking apps global.

Vinay:

We submit content about [process rate 00:31:48] itself, right? The kind of profile for process rate and then we also actually wrote most of the content or a lot of the content of the Shared Zap as well. I remember you working with Ben who's our content writer and were getting a lot of push back on constantly changing up the words and it was because we were reusing the same phrases over and over again in all the Shared Zap. Who's doing that? Is that you? Do you have a process for editing and building up? Do you write any of the content yourself or is it pushing back to the others to do it?

Alison:

It's a really case by case basis. Most of the time I push back at least once if need be because I'm not going to write the best copy for your app. That's just not possible. You live and breathe your app. I have to live and breathe 600 apps. To do right via our partners, I feel really passionate about getting the best content out of them we can because it's important to me that we represent that app in the best way that we can and I truly believe that that's going to come from you and not from us. Just solely because we would never be able to have the breath that we do. If I spend two days writing copy that it will take you guys 30 minutes to do because you're so familiar ... you live and breathe your app.

There are instances where that copy comes back and it's almost there but not quite there then I'll go ahead and just make those edits myself. Then a lot of times especially the more we grow, I'm seeing more people, more phone apps, a lot of English as a second language so I have to do a lot of editing therein. There's certain instances where I can tell that pushing back might not be the best so I just work with it but it's a tricky thing because I don't want to push back. I don't want to make anyone mad. I don't want to make upset. We just want to make sure that we get the best content we can on those pages because it's helpful for everyone. We actually have our partners write a little bit of content again, number one to make absolutely sure that we are representing them as best we can and no one represents a partner better than them themselves.

Vinay:

Just exploring your site a little bit and I know I've spent too much on this and we've talked about podcasts. You go to these different sections. You have these Shared Zaps learning pages, you have the app profile pages, you have multiple plugs, you have the developer platform, API documentation, you have an engineering blog as well. How's all these being managed? Is this just custom built CMS to manage all this content or you [string 00:34:29] together WordPress or what's going on?

Alison:

Yeah, it's all in-house. Every page that you see in Zapier whether it's in our help section, whether it's a Shared Zap learning page, whether it's a blog post, that's all done by our in-house CMS. At the end of the day, for us in particular, I don't know if this ... It might not be the best advice for everyone but with the amount of inner lasing that we have to do to connect all these app dots together. It just makes sense for us to do it ourselves. Let's take process rate for example, if you guys update your Zap year integration which I know that you're going to do soon, that triggers off a whole internal automation for me so I'm like, oh they did this. I'm going to write about it. I write about it and that blog post is produced and then let's say we take that content and create three or four more Shared Zaps for it then those pages are spun up, then those could potentially end up on your [help 00:35:33] page. There's a lot of that that's all inter linked in our system.

Vinay:

Do you find the popular Zaps automatically when you surface them?

Alison:

Yeah, yeah. [inaudible 00:35:45] under the [inaudible 00:35:46], I think that we would have probably been beyond a WordPress installed or something like that. Probably after app 30 or 40 just because the work that it would take to maintain that would be better spent just doing it ourselves.

Vinay:

Understood.

Tony:

Just looking at what you've done, what springs to mind for myself is, have you heard Seth Godin speak about the connections economy?

Alison:

A little bit, yeah. He actually mentioned us in a blog post the day or two before Christmas, and so that was really, really cool to see.

Tony:

He talks about businesses and the new businesses coming up are benefiting and leveraging the connections economy, so it's about offering products and services. It's about connecting people and creating connections. What you've achieved with Zapier, you've definitely embraced and leveraged the connections economy. Just looking at the blog and the website, it's almost like Zapier is hidden, there's so much focus on these other partners. Look at these great apps you can utilize. Look at all these different things you can do. You're doing all that but you're not necessarily shouting about Zapier and I think that is something unique.

Vinay:

It's the invisible product, right?

Tony:

That's it. That's it.

Vinay:

I call it a black box product. It's running in the background and it's doing all these amazing stuff but a lot of the time people don't see it happening, right?

Tony:

Yeah, yeah.

Alison:

Right. It's been a very interesting thing for me personally because when I first transitioned from support [inaudible 00:37:17] in marketing side to help out there we thought that we needed to do more community building and it became quickly apparent because of what you just said, that that was going to be really difficult for us because Zapier is a very under the hood type of tool. It's not that we don't have our extremely passionate users because all apps have that. You've got your core users who are very vocal and it's a really lovely thing to see but at the end of the day we realized that the best thing that we could do is, as far as connections go, would be to build really solid quality lifetime relationships with our partners. I'm glad you said that because I think that means that it's working and we're doing what we need to do as make our partners the true focus of everything that we do.

Tony:

… just thinking from our perspective, is there a risk of Zapier getting lost? Then it's almost like that's the whole emphasis. The more we or the more you push your partners to the front, the more people are going to want to use Zapier to make it work. I use this tool and that tool but I want to use them together. Let's utilize Zapier to do that so that's really good.

Alison:

I like to think of it as everyone wins situation. We are thriving and successful because of our partners and then in turn we're able to pay that forward so to speak, put our partners as forward as we possibly can. It's a really good thing for everyone.

Tony:

I'm just looking at the page. I'm looking at, you've got the two icons and a plus sign in the middle or the two icons and arrow. I feel like it's my site, so I can put my icon in the middle to say this is your icon that links these two together. Just that kind of natural, I want to brand my products, I want to push our product to the fore front where that's not the case here. Again, it's that hidden, as Vinay said, the black box product.

Alison:

Sometimes that a difficult thing but at the end of the day, it's the right thing to do, it's the best thing to do and so that's why you see that it is.

Tony:

It's obviously working. It's obviously working for you guys.

Alison:

It's working a little bit, yeah.

Tony:

Just a bit. Okay, well, we just committed to the other mark. Again, the valuable system explored. It's been really great chatting with you Alison.

Vinay:

Well, how many systems was it on your mind?

Tony:

Multiple systems explored.

Alison:

570. We'll just go with 570.

Tony:

Wow.

Vinay:

570 apps. How many connections?

Alison:

4.3 millions

Vinay:

Million, yeah. There you go. 4.3 million systems developed.

Tony:

How many unique landing pages was it?

Alison:

It's well over 10, 000.

Tony:

I'm glad we're not doing any show notes for this episode. We'll have to link all of them.

Alison:

I can recite them all off the top of my head. My favorite start to be vain for just one second is, because I had to do the math on this, in the month or in the last year, so in 2015 we saved people 14 and 1/2 million hours of work. That to me at the end of the day is the thing that I'm most proud of that we together have achieved is basically giving people their time back. The older you get and the more sentimentally you get you realize that time is one thing that you never get any more of. Giving people time back to spend with their families and kids and loved ones and on themselves, I think is what I get out of bed everyday for and is a really exciting thing to see. Hopefully next year we'll turn 14 million hours saved into 25 million hours saved and just keep going from there.

Tony:

Even if you put an average dollar amount on each of those I would say, how much money you've saved companies and people and businesses.

Vinay:

Definitely doing a very valuable work.

Alison:

It's very, very cool. I'm very lucky.

Tony:

Alison, thank you very much.

Vinay:

Just for your [inaudible 00:41:32] people know. We've talked about Zapier all episodes the head to zapier.com. If people want to get into contact with you directly, maybe just to reach out, have a conversation or maybe to learn more about integrating and becoming a partner of Zapier, how can they get in contact with you?

Alison:

The easiest email address to remember because my name is spelt funny is partners@zapier.com and that actually comes into our help scout inbox. All of us have access to those emails at all times. We feel very strongly about that. Partners@zapier.com, it will probably be me who answers that but you never know. That's the best way to get in touch with us. We also have an about page, zapier.com/about, which has all of our individual contact and so if you want to reach out to me personally. Then I'm pretty vocal on Twitter. My Twitter handle is alisongroves. Alison with one L, A-L-I-S-I-O-N, that's all one word or just add zapier also. I see all of those as well. There's different ways you can find us and happy to help or talk or whatever you need anytime.

Vinay:

Really appreciate your time Alison. It's been amazing.

Alison:

This was a blast guys. Thank you so much for for thinking of me and having us. Appreciate it.

Tony:

Thank you.

Vinay:

Cheers Alison. Bye bye.