Zapier reached a $5B valuation with $1.3M of funding

Post by daniellarusso » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #103

superbcarrot wrote: post #29

Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. Like if you showed me the wikipedia page for Zapier and asked me give it some value, I would be way off. Or if you pitched the business idea to me, I would tell you do something better with your time.

>Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy. Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do. Many programmers have poor empathy and thus make bad salespeople and investors. If you can understand how most of the planet thinks…

Post by daniellarusso » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

ROARosen wrote: post #159

hooande wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this? My understanding is that the market for contractors is oversaturated right now. You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc if you look hard enough Like the grandparent comment, it's hard for me to imagine that there are enough people in need of this service to justify a $5B valuation

> why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this? ... > You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc. The reason is exactly that. They don't want to pay hundreds for a dev to dev for them, and that's just for 'one' integration, with Zapier they can always add whatever they want. They'd rather have the 'cheaper' option (which to be real doesn't always…

Post by jaxn » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #103

superbcarrot wrote: post #29

Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. Like if you showed me the wikipedia page for Zapier and asked me give it some value, I would be way off. Or if you pitched the business idea to me, I would tell you do something better with your time.

>Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy. Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do. Many programmers have poor empathy and thus make bad salespeople and investors. If you can understand how most of the planet thinks…

Post by daniellarusso » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 2:58 AM UTC

preommr wrote: post #163

I am astonished at the valuation. I don't understand how there isn't more competition. It's not that difficult to wire up different APIs. This is great for open source software because it's highly modular, independent development with very low levels of complexity. I don't understand how Zapier has such high prices either. At some of the higher tiers, you could hire someone full time just to what Zapier does since th…

Post by staticassertion » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #184

anm89 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine just blasting out at a person that you've never met and know essentially nothing about, based on a few sentences they wrote regarding startup valuations that "they lack empathy". As in you are willing to assess this other person as being completely devoid of empathy. That seems fairly insane.

The word "empathy" has an enormous amount of baggage attached to it unfortunately and triggers a whole library of insinuations and assumptions. Admittedly, it was the wrong word to use. I should have said "Consumer empathy" which would have been appropriately in context. Also there are varying degrees of consumer empathy. I know some people who are absolute naturals at understanding people and it's amazing to see how…