The one that brings it all together
Hi there! I'm Jose E. Ruano, the writer of The New Gazette. You are receiving this email because you signed up for it, a weekly newsletter about all things digital. Thank you for being here. If this email was forwarded to you, subscribe by clicking the button below.
Hello again 👋🏼,
I don’t know if you remember this but there was a time on the internet when synchronizing all your apps was a mess. It took a lot of time to move your data from one place to another.
You needed to figure out what to do in order to make everything work
When the internet was started there were only a handful of apps to use for work but as everything started growing more and more, some solutions were required to make it simpler to use them collectively.
Sometimes you needed to code to achieve this goal, trying to get all your apps in the same place, using an API or another tool which was a lot trickier than now.
Luckily, some people saw this problem and built a solution for it, which I’m gonna focus on today.
There’s one that helps get together all your apps and automate everyday tasks.
I’m talking about Zapier
You may even use the app now but do you know what were their origins or why every user loves it.
Let’s start right now.
What is it?
Zapier is a global platform that allows end-users to integrate the web applications they use into one simple dashboard.
It provides workflows to automate the use of web applications together, often described as a translator between web APIs.
Background
The company was started in Missouri by co-founders Wade Foster, Bryan Helmig, and Mike Knoop as part of the first Startup Weekend Columbia in 2011.
After initially submitting an application for the Winter 2012 funding cycle and being rejected, they built an initial prototype with 25 apps and were accepted to the Y Combinator startup seed accelerator in the Summer 2012 funding cycle.
As a result of the acceptance, the company was relocated to Mountain View, California in Spring 2012. In October of the same year, Zapier received a $1.3 million seed funding round led by global venture investment firm Bessemer Venture Partners. After that, the company has been expanding into what is today, reaching profitability since 2014.
In March 2017, after months of growth, the company offered a "de-location package", consisting of $10,000 in moving reimbursement to employees who desired to move away from the San Francisco Bay Area. After the announcement, job applications increased by 50%
Last summer 2020, Zapier reached $100 million in annualized recurring revenue; it’s passed $140 million by now. And in January of this year, investors found a way into the business, which made it into a company with a $5 billion valuation.
Why everyone loves it?
Zapier allows up to 3,000 different apps to automate, helping first-time entrepreneurs and businessmen/women build a better workflow on their activities.
Take for example this one. Imagine you have a clothing store and to work you use Google Sheets to keep the inventory, Gmail to communicate, Facebook for marketing, and messaging with clients.
A few years ago, to get an order ready to send, you needed to answer the message manually, then check the inventory by hand to see if it was still available then call the team to send it over to the customer. A process that consumed a lot of time. doing it millions of times with every order.
Now, if you bring everything together using Zapier you could, get a client asking for a product via FB, answer it immediately using a bot, while at the same time see if it’s available in your store by looking through the spreadsheets and then communicate with the Shipping team to confirm the order with automated messages. All in a matter of seconds.
Creating endless possibilities to bring every app together.
The example above is just one combination you could do of all the partners available on the platform.
The success of Zapier is the accessibility it brings to use this type of automatization, being one of the apps leading the No-Code movement (one I wrote about before!) where no matter your expertise you can create something valuable without a line of code or something more complicated.
"Small business owners struggle to manage all of their customer data, especially when it's split across multiple apps," "Zapier allows our users to accurately and automatically streamline important information between 3,000+ apps. As a result, business owners have a deeper understanding of their customers."
said Meredith Schmidt, EVP, and GM of Salesforce Essentials, a partner company of the platform
It allows every single person to automate their activities to make them focus on the most important job and not on mindless processes.
Future
A few days ago, the company acquired Makerpad, a no-code education service, and community, driven by a single tweet (this one to be exact) Where both CEOs lead to conversations and a deal.
Creating a space where people without the need of learning programming languages could create something valuable.
Zapier’s future looks bright as it will keep opening up its platform to more apps and more automatizations or “Zaps” as they call them.
I’ve been hearing about this company for a while and it seems because of the digital transformation of businesses. Zapier could become bigger than what it is now.
This is an example of a company using the internet as a way to reach their audience, they are very active in the community of digital creators and businesses where they ask what they want and then work hard to develop it at the right moment.
It’s not a surprise why Zapier achieve all this success as it solves a problem for everyone, no matter their industry, had and makes it in a really simple way.
Stay tuned to this company as many exciting things are coming their way
Until next week,
Jose
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If you need help to find work, Side Hustle Stack is a FREE resource to find platform-based work, giving you an idea of what is the best place to share or get to work on your projects according to the type.
Packy McCormick created as people call it, the best alternative to Business School, as he shares what’s going on in business and technology via pop culture, go check it out here. It’s called Not Boring, which is a good name as the stories are exactly that, not boring.
If you want to start your no-code journey, here is a Cheatsheet to what platforms you can use, done by KP, go watch it here
If you want to talk you can schedule a 15-minute chat with me to discuss whatever you want and I could be helpful for you. here’s the link or visit my website right here.
Some of the links included in this newsletter are part of an affiliate/referral program, just to be clear with you.
A few more things...
Is there a topic or brand you think I should cover? Or a funny ad I can dissect? I’d love to hear from you! You can email me at hello@thenewgazette.co, respond to this email, or drop it in the comments ⬇