Knoop says Zapier began with a broad aim to help software tools work together as SaaS grew. The team built 50 to 60 integrations itself, then relied on partners to add more. For those early partners, Zapier offered a way to meet customer requests and improve retention, even before it could offer much distribution.
Product and Design Processes for Remote Teams
Speakers
Mike Knoop, co-founder and chief product officer at Zapier, talks with Y Combinator partner Kevin Hale about building and scaling remote product and design teams.
Remote work began as a practical choice: the founders could not afford an office, and the first support hire lived in Chicago. As the company grew to eight or nine people, retreats helped confirm that remote work was succeeding. Knoop says autonomy was also part of the founders’ goal: people should control their schedules and take action without waiting for permission.
Knoop says remote work makes teams clarify decision-making, communication, and processes earlier. Zapier sets expectations for when to move from Slack messages to a video call, such as when many people are typing. The company also treats a direct Slack mention as something to acknowledge within 24 hours, while expecting people who are blocked to find other useful work.
Zapier pairs product managers, designers, and engineers around shared goals, using team OKRs to focus on customer impact. Teams can choose their own working practices, while common interfaces, tools, and ownership boundaries help them coordinate. Knoop describes OKRs as a way to prioritize and discuss trade-offs, not to define every task.
Zapier uses Slack for day-to-day discussion, Async for weekly work updates and decisions, and Quip for lasting documentation. As the company grew, the volume of Slack messages and Async posts became hard to follow, so the team added curated feeds. Knoop’s advice for starting remote is to build habits of autonomy and written communication early, including sharing status so colleagues across time zones can keep moving.
Takeaways
- Give platform partners a concrete customer benefit before you have a large audience.
- Treat remote work as a cultural choice as well as a set of tools and processes.
- Write down when to switch communication channels and what response times people can expect.
- Give cross-functional teams shared goals, then let them choose how to meet them.
- Curate written updates as the team grows so people can find the context they need.
Mentioned in this talk
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What was claimed 14
- role atKevin Hale is runs a pricing workshop at
Y Combinator“it’s a very popular workshop that we run”
0:00inStartup Pricing 101YouTube Verified4 sources· Talk
- foundedKevin Hale founded Wufoo
“co-founded a company called Wufoo”
0:05inOffice Hours with Kevin & QasarYouTube Verified3 sources· Talk
- role atMike Knoop is co-founder and chief product officer at
Zapier“I’m a co-founder of Zapier and its chief product officer.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- featureZapier: Automates tasks by connecting apps and moving data between them
“Zapier is a piece of software that helps you automate your tasks at work.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- launchedZapier: Open platform
“the initial decision back in 2012 to build an open platform”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- usescompany communication
“If Slack is your main office, as it is for us today”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- metricZapier: About 200 employees
“Two hundred.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- usesissue tracking and project management
“we use Jira for issue tracking and project management”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- builtMike Knoop built Asynchronous tasksinternal blog and communication tool
“the one that I actually built in the early days is a tool called Async”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- usesZapier uses Asynchronous tasksinternal blog, updates, and curated feeds
“every week we ask everyone to write up what they worked on. This is the heartbeat of the organization. It goes up on the blog, on Async.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- useslong-form internal documentation
“Internally, there’s Slack and Async. We also use Quip for long-form documentation.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- featureAsynchronous tasks: Includes OKR software with annotations linking metrics to written updates
“We actually built our own OKR software into Async.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- metricZapier: Two company retreats a year
“The biggest thing we do is hold two company retreats a year.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
- usesremote design reviews and collaboration
“the schedule created a forcing function to turn around, iterate, and go deep over 48 hours, then show it again on Thursday. It’s a mix: you still get deep work between the two review check-ins, but it’s all on Zoom.”
YouTube Unverified1 source· Talk
