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Growing Zapier past $140M ARR
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Humans of PLGšŸ’„

Growing Zapier past $140M ARR

With Steeve Vakeeswaran, Head of Sales & Expansion at Zapier

Rahul Krishnan
,
Ruchin Kulkarni
, and
Gayatri Gaidhani
Aug 31, 2022
8
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Growing Zapier past $140M ARR
www.topofthelyne.co

šŸ‘‹ Hey there!Ā Welcome back to 🄁 Humans of PLGšŸ’„ā€”a space where we bring you insights directly from the OGs - the humans in the drivers’ seat, building your favorite PLG companies.

Since we started this newsletter, our #1 goal has been to get enough folks excited about the product-led world that we so dearly loveĀ ā¤ļø; this is yet another extension of this grand effort.

Take Toplyne out for a spin! šŸ¤øšŸ¼ā€ā™€ļø

Haven’t subscribed yet? Better late than neveršŸ‘‡šŸ¼

Today, we’re picking the 🧠 of Steeve Vakeeswaran, Head Of Sales & Expansion at Zapier.

Watch the full version here šŸ‘‡šŸ¼ or scroll ahead for the TLDR highlights šŸ”„

If you’re planning to listen to this on your treadmill or on your drive to work and would prefer the audio only version, we gotcha covered:

✨ Catch the full episode on Spotify:

…or Apple podcasts, if that’s your thing:

Zapier’s first Sales hire šŸ‘ŠšŸ¼

Zapier's growth from $0-$140 million has been largely driven by their bottom-up self-serve engine. But in early 2021, with Steeve at the helm, Zapier started testing a Sales motion. Over the last year and a half, Steeve has incubated, hired, and built a sales-assist team from scratch.

Catch our in-depth breakdown of Zapier’s growth story here

In January 2022, CEO & Co-founder Wade Foster announced that they are officially hiring for Sales roles.

We cover a lot of ground here with Steeve, including:

  • Let’s settle it - Is it Zappier or Zapeier?

  • How does someone go from KPMG to Shopify to becoming Zapier’s first Sales hire?

  • The cultural challenges of introducing a sales motion in a PLG company

  • Differences between traditional sales and the hot new ā€œsales assist roleā€

  • When does a PLG company start thinking about sales?

  • Zapier's culture is rather unique

  • Building virality for a single-player tool like Zapier

  • Levers other than Sales-assist to increase the depth of adoption and expansion

  • Zapier's most interesting use case

  • East coast or west coast?

  • Biggest mistake that PLG companies make

  • Tweet Reactions & Rapid Fire

Shownotes šŸ“

Steeve’s recommendations:

šŸ›  Tool: Grain

šŸ“° Newsletter: DTC branding by Nik Sharma

Connect with him at :

āœ‰ļø hi@steeve.co

🐦 Twitter

šŸ”— LinkedIn


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