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Growing Zapier past $140M ARR

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Humans of PLG💥

Growing Zapier past $140M ARR

With Steeve Vakeeswaran, Head of Sales & Expansion at Zapier

Rahul Krishnan
,
Ruchin Kulkarni
, and
Gayatri Gaidhani
Aug 31, 2022
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Growing Zapier past $140M ARR

www.topofthelyne.co
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👋 Hey there! Welcome back to 🥁 Humans of PLG💥—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 love ❤️; this is yet another extension of this grand effort.

Take Toplyne out for a spin! 🤸🏼‍♀️

Haven’t subscribed yet? Better late than never👇🏼

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

Watch the full version here 👇🏼 or scroll ahead for the TLDR highlights 🔥

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 👊🏼

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 “sales assist role”

  • 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 📝

Steeve’s recommendations:

🛠 Tool: Grain

📰 Newsletter: DTC branding by Nik Sharma

Connect with him at :

✉️ hi@steeve.co

🐦 Twitter

🔗 LinkedIn


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Growing Zapier past $140M ARR

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