When ChatGPT launched, Zapier did what most companies did: shared it in Slack, called it cool, moved on. No mandates, no urgency. Just "hey, this might be interesting for your roadmap." Then GPT-4 dropped six months later—and everything changed.
In a recent episode of the Modern CTO podcast with Joel Beasley, Zapier CEO Wade Foster shared how a company-wide "code red" and week-long hackathon jumped AI adoption from 10% to 50% in just one week.
The secret? Get everyone's hands on the keyboard. Fear fades when people actually build with these tools.
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How one week changed everything
When the leap from GPT-3.5 to GPT-4 made it clear that AI wasn't slowing down, Foster called a company-wide "code red"—a term Zapier had never used before. That was the point.
"The delta between 3.5 and 4, both in terms of model quality and costs, was pretty big. It didn't take a genius to look out and go, if any of this continues in any way, this has big implications on how we work, the products we offer, everything.
As a CEO, you have to be very careful because if you pull that lever all the time, people learn to ignore it. But if you pull it in the moments that matter, it's jarring in the way that people are like, okay, this one matters."
The most impactful thing Zapier did wasn't a memo or a mandate. They stopped the entire company for a week and had everyone—engineers, marketers, salespeople, finance—build something with AI.
"We went from just under 10% of people using AI weekly in their job to over 50% in one week. That was easily the singular most important thing that lurched the company ahead."
Why did it work? Foster says the fear of AI fades once people actually use it. They stop imagining worst-case scenarios and start seeing what's possible. They also learn the limitations firsthand, which makes the conversation more pragmatic.
This pattern shows up across every company Foster talks to on his podcast Agents of Scale. The ones succeeding with AI transformation share three traits: leadership that's hands-on (not just preaching), frictionless procurement so people can actually access tools, and hackathons for everyone—not just engineering.
Zapier is the most connected AI orchestration platform—integrating with thousands of apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Use forms, data tables, and logic to build secure, automated, AI-powered systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more.
What "AI fluent" actually means
In May 2025, Zapier started requiring all new hires to be AI fluent. But they didn't just wing it. Foster's team went function by function, studying how top performers in each role were actually using AI. Then they built hiring tests around those use cases.
They rate candidates on a four-tier scale: unacceptable, acceptable, adoptive, and transformative.
"When you say, 'hey, show me what you're doing with AI,' you can sniff it out pretty quick. There are a lot of people who are like, 'okay, I asked ChatGPT to rewrite this memo.' You're like, okay, you're not doing nothing, but there's a whole other world you can go explore."
The trait that matters most? Hyper-curiosity. And because AI moves so fast, they update their evaluation criteria every six months.
Why you should automate yourself out of a job
There's a fear that if you automate your own work, you'll become redundant. Foster says that's backwards.
"I know of no CEO or leader where a person came to me and said, 'I have automated my entire job,' whose reaction is not, 'holy crap, show me how.' And I have nine other projects I'm ready to turn you loose on."
If you can systematically automate work, you've just become one of the most valuable people in the company. That's a skill to run toward, not away from.
This article is based on Wade Foster's appearance on the Modern CTO podcast with Joel Beasley. Watch the full conversation for more on Zapier's origin story, hiring for AI fluency, and why SaaS isn't dead.
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