Between Two COO's with Michael Koenig · 2026-07-15 · 51 min
Michael Koenig talks with Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, about running the company for 14 years without a CEO safety net and without ever naming a COO. Wade explains why he thinks hiring a chief operating officer from outside a company is a coin flip, why Zapier put AI transformation inside the chief people officer role instead of naming a dedicated AI executive, and why he believes AI adoption is fundamentally an organizational and people problem rather than a technology problem. The conversation covers Zapier's “code red” response to GPT-4, the pricing decision that traded short-term revenue for long-term customer trust, and what changed in Wade's own leadership style over 14 years in the same seat.
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