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

forbes.com

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

#221

Post by holistio »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #193

As a non-technical founder my company pays Zapier thousands of dollars per year. We've automated a lot of tedious, manual tasks that you would typically assign a VA. I think we save some money, but even if it was break even, or more expensive than manual labor, the mental overhead of not managing another person, wondering whether the tedious work was done, and according to specification justifies the cost.

Can you give examples of stuff that Zapier does for you that a VA would do?

In my mind Zapier does things that a junior developer or maybe an office admnistrator would do, not an assistant. I feel like there is a small, but significant difference.

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

#222

Post by dillondoyle »

marketingtech wrote: post #130
swyx wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm sorry but you, an account named marketingtech, are extremely blinded by your perspective right now. Zapier charges $599 usd for 100k "tasks" per month. you want to use Zapier for adtech ? LOL.

If you have 100k transactions or even landing page views per month, $599 is going to be the cheapest part of your advertising stack.

What?!?!?!

first of all if you only have 100k pageviews a month you're probably not even making $599 from serving ads

and second i don't understand what Zapier is supposed to accomplish in your mind?

maybe you have been using it in a way I can't think of?

from what I think you are talking about: is zapier supposed to like sit between website & like some SSP or DSP? during the bid!?!?! or just to like establish an audience to target like send your new email based id to a DMP or wherever for a customer who wants a PMP deal or something?

Also I'm almost positive Segment in your example is not used in the way you describe to pass user/device identifiers between ad platforms? Like i think they connect to adwords but only to grab the standard reporting data you can get into bq anyways. not any user or device data (impression level stuff is now complicated in their own odd like 'private' data clearing house thing).

TTD Unified ID would be what you're looking for

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

#223

Post by adventured »

tootie wrote: post #75
marketingtech wrote: post #28

Zapier joins Tealium and Segment on the list of billion dollar valuations for powering the next generation of ad tech. As cross-site cookies and browser pixels are increasingly blocked, ad platforms are moving from browser-based tracking to server-side data transfer. Like those other companies, Zapier provides a single integration point that funnels user and conversion data to dozens of marketing companies' server-si…

Zapier isn't necessarily just for ad tech. It can any kind of ad hoc automation between well-defined services. We use it for support ticket automation.

It's a properly productized IFTTT.

IFTTT was a disaster as a product for laypersons. Zapier is how you have to make things work for normal people to use such automation tools. There will be many more Zapiers across every segment where there is complexity in the tooling and interaction.

If a person wanted to start a great business, find a business segment you know really well and create a niche Zapier for it. Then when the big companies come knocking (which they will right before they try to kill you and take your niche), sell to them. It's a repeat of the great CRM / enterprise roundup wars.

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

#224

Post by adventured »

dillondoyle wrote: post #222
marketingtech wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 100k transactions or even landing page views per month, $599 is going to be the cheapest part of your advertising stack.

What?!?!?! first of all if you only have 100k pageviews a month you're probably not even making $599 from serving ads and second i don't understand what Zapier is supposed to accomplish in your mind? maybe you have been using it in a way I can't think of? from what I think you are talking about: is zapier supposed to like sit between website & like some SSP or DSP? during the bid!?!?! or just to like establish an aud…

> first of all if you only have 100k pageviews a month you're probably not even making $599 from serving ads

You're talking about something entirely different from what the parent is.

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

#225

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

supernovae wrote: post #69
didibus wrote: post #66

So Zapier is like a later competitor to IFTTT ? But basically the same thing?

IFTTT kinda gave up in comparison to Zapier - zapier has so many api/service/framework/tool interfaces where IFTTT kinda just went niche with home automation and basic stuff beyond that. For example, with IFTTT the RSS trigger is pretty stupid but with zapier you can trigger based on parsed fields with values and triggers on those values... I had hoped that Zapier would put some pressure on IFTTT to do more but it se…

But what is the price justification: Zaphier $599 per month vs. $3.99 per month for IFTTT ?

I know that IFTTT is a quite long on the market, do not know about functionality comparison.

https://zapier.com/pricing

Even cheapest Zapier plan is $19.99 per month.

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

#226

Post by aerovistae »

holistio wrote: post #221
nickfromseattle wrote: post #193

As a non-technical founder my company pays Zapier thousands of dollars per year. We've automated a lot of tedious, manual tasks that you would typically assign a VA. I think we save some money, but even if it was break even, or more expensive than manual labor, the mental overhead of not managing another person, wondering whether the tedious work was done, and according to specification justifies the cost.

Can you give examples of stuff that Zapier does for you that a VA would do? In my mind Zapier does things that a junior developer or maybe an office admnistrator would do, not an assistant. I feel like there is a small, but significant difference.

(What is a VA? That only means Veteran's Affairs to me.)

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

#227

Post by valuearb »

jtsiskin wrote: post #72
reducesuffering wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not, because that isn't enough information to determine your conclusion. That's a 36x P/S ratio. Many established public companies are at or exceeding that, like Cloudflare and Crowdstrike. (those companies COULD be overvalued too, but it depends on something else) The most important factor or metric you're missing from the equation is growth (assuming eventual profit margins are normal). It doesn't matter w…

For some context, some other current P/Es: Google: 35.06 Apple: 32.54 Microsoft: 34.64 PayPal: 68.38 Amazon: 73.10 Shopify: 420.04 Square: 515.13 Tesla: 1,043.84

Those are P/Es, not P/S.

If Zapier nets 25% after taxes, it’s valuation is 150x earnings.

And Shopify, Square and Tesla’s valuations are even more absurd.

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

#228

Post by dvcrn »

tjbiddle wrote: post #165

I love Zapier and wish them the best. Been using them the past couple years to automate many things in my e-commerce business. That being said, I come from a software background (As many here at HN do), and I recently found "Integromat" and have completely switched over all my Zapier automations to them. Their price point is much cheaper (Zapier was beginning to charge a few hundred a month for me - and now I'm down…

Thanks for this!

I love Zapier but I can't justify spending so much on these small automations I use it for. I'm piggybacking on my company account currently but Integromat looks really nice! Exactly what I've been looking for

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

#229

Post by gk1 »

aerovistae wrote: post #226
holistio wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give examples of stuff that Zapier does for you that a VA would do? In my mind Zapier does things that a junior developer or maybe an office admnistrator would do, not an assistant. I feel like there is a small, but significant difference.

(What is a VA? That only means Veteran's Affairs to me.)

Virtual Assistant

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

#230

Post by valuearb »

reducesuffering wrote: post #38
valuearb wrote: post #11

$5B is a pretty ridiculous valuation for a $140M revenues company.

No, it's not, because that isn't enough information to determine your conclusion. That's a 36x P/S ratio. Many established public companies are at or exceeding that, like Cloudflare and Crowdstrike. (those companies COULD be overvalued too, but it depends on something else) The most important factor or metric you're missing from the equation is growth (assuming eventual profit margins are normal). It doesn't matter w…

Virtually all of the companies trading north of 30x sales are ridiculously overpriced. It’s just a bubble, don’t allow it to distort what long term values really are.

Amazon and Cisco were similarly overvalued in 2000. It took Amazon 7 years to trade back to that price. Cisco never has.

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