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Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

georgesequeira.com

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Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#101

Post by contravariant »

alberth wrote: post #21

What do you use Zapier for? I feel like I live in a cave. Over the past 10+ years, I’ve yet to understand what use cases people use for things like IFTTT/Zapier/etc. I clearly must for alone I’m not understanding. Can someone please help me understand their specific use case. I’m genuinely curious.

I'm not sure we're the target audience to be honest. My experience with bundled 'integrations' tends to be that you spend about as much effort fixing the mismatch between the provided integration and what you want as it would take to write an integration from scratch.

In one case it took a bit longer, but in the end it was still necessary to write the whole thing from scratch in order to comply with the terms of use of the API. Which kind of proves my point.

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#102

Post by maxerickson »

iamacyborg wrote: post #64
emteycz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have no idea where to start with rETL and I'm a software engineer... Search turns up some medicine and other non-related stuff. If it's a typo, then sorry. But ETL is the same beast. I have few ideas where to start thanks to my programming background, but I can't imagine the marketing department guys do any of it. Non-ideal but less expensive is still better than nothing (or too expensive to stay profitable).…

Basically, reverse ETL, ie get data from the warehouse to operational platforms. The two big players are Census and Hightouch. https://www.getcensus.com/ https://hightouch.io/ Both offer no-code tools to help non-technical users make use of the data.

What does the L mean then?

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#103

Post by georgesequeira »

ngz00 wrote: post #34
supersync wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Make, n8n, workflow86 Agree that coded integrations are still very relevant, but the addressable surface for UI is pretty large now.

Is there any open source, embeddable alternatives or frameworks? I've got an ETL DSL that is fully serializable and I've been looking to create a UI tool for it.

I don't know of a solution for ETL DSL -> UI but https://github.com/lowdefy/lowdefy goes from a DSL to internal web apps. Perhaps some inspiration could be taken from there. Good luck!

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#104

Post by georgesequeira »

iamacyborg wrote: post #70
ngz00 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any open source, embeddable alternatives or frameworks? I've got an ETL DSL that is fully serializable and I've been looking to create a UI tool for it.

Maybe Airbyte if I understand what you're asking correctly.

Ah right. Yeah, reverse-engineering Airbyte's DSL and just "borrowing" their UI generation may be the move.

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#105

Post by georgesequeira »

dnndev wrote: post #26
someotherperson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're building one for healthcare? Mind sharing more details about the company? Email in profile if it's something private but you'd be open to sharing privately.

email sent!

also interested, if you're up for it! (also email in profile)

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#106

Post by Invictus0 »

joshmlewis wrote: post #85
mylons wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t think the author is suggesting Zapier will go away. like craigslist is still thriving and probably has a long future ahead of itself.

Craigslist is still thriving? I don't know anyone who uses Craigslist to list stuff for sale now, FB Marketplace seems to have taken the majority of traffic. They've apparently lost almost half of their revenue in the last couple of years (COVID being a contributing factor I'm sure but it started declining in 2019). Total monthly visits is also down half from 2017. I believe the golden days for Craigslist are over. h…

I still use Craigslist: it's great for finding apartments and roommates. Usage varies by location obviously but Craigslist is far from dead.

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#107

Post by dsaavy »

tucaz wrote: post #10
dnndev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of comment I was hoping to see. May I ask, what kinds of things are you using zapier for that are not just nice to haves. Something that you would say it pays for itself (increases revenue somehow)

I would love to get an answer to this question as well. I keep comings back to Zapier and the likes hoping I will find a useful use case but can’t. It seems that all it does is add stuff from email marketing forms to Google spreadsheets.

For more complex things Zapier falls flat IMO. I've been using Make.com (formerly Integromat) and it offers way more flexibility and it's easier to configure for more complex automations.

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#108

Post by me_bx »

maxerickson wrote: post #102
iamacyborg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, reverse ETL, ie get data from the warehouse to operational platforms. The two big players are Census and Hightouch. https://www.getcensus.com/ https://hightouch.io/ Both offer no-code tools to help non-technical users make use of the data.

What does the L mean then?

E - Extract

T - Transform

L - Load

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#109

Post by boc »

iamacyborg wrote: post #68
boc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your goal to have a martech stack that doesn't rely on third party silos, or is your goal to have your lead-gen form populate your Airtable CRM for your new experimental acquisition campaign? The marketer is being asked to acquire users, not make it look pretty behind the scenes. In the testing phase, it's way better to use Zapier to get things done fast. Then you can revisit and scale later with a proper solution…

My goal is to ensure some degree of process sanity exists to ensure data processing complies with the law and that systems interoperate effectively. I don't think anyone using Airtable as a CRM has those sorts of concerns, however.

Right - it sounds like you're processing data at a very different scale from the typical Zapier user.

Re: Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

#110

Post by iamacyborg »

jtwaleson wrote: post #83
mylons wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i agree that this is mostly what i see too. but it’s not agile, it’s people claiming they’re agile and doing something else.

We outsource a lot of the marketing tech and website related work so marketing is not blocked by our own development team. We don’t see marketing tech and our Wordpress website as our “secret sauce”. The devs are just focused on product development.

Does your product not generate data that would be useful for the marketing team?
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