[HN Gopher] Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
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Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity
Author : georgesequeira
Score : 163 points
Date : 2022-04-12 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.georgesequeira.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.georgesequeira.com)
| Lightbody wrote:
| Hey -- my startup (https://reclaim.ai) got mentioned here. Super
| cool!
|
| Funny enough: quite a few Zapier employees use us to do calendar
| automation.
|
| IMO, the opportunity is "and" not "or". Zapier is great (I use it
| too!) for so many use cases, but sometimes the use case is
| complex enough and the opportunity large enough that dedicated
| solutions emerge.
|
| So while some value may strip away from Zapier via dedicated
| solutions like Reclaim, I think Zapier will also continue to add
| value by educating more of the world, improving their UX, and
| connecting with more services.
|
| For the folks looking for coding-style solutions, I'm also big
| fan of https://pipedream.com/. Check it out!
| mylons wrote:
| 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.
| joshmlewis wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://aimgroup.com/2021/02/11/craigslist-traffic-
| revenue-f...
| Invictus0 wrote:
| I still use Craigslist: it's great for finding apartments
| and roommates. Usage varies by location obviously but
| Craigslist is far from dead.
| IceHegel wrote:
| My sense is that most no code tools will face a far greater
| challenger from AI programming tools like Copilot than from
| further unbundling through web interfaces. It's just so much
| easier to set up an automated chain of api glue when you don't
| have to read the docks.
| jdrc wrote:
| zapier sounds like something that doesn't scale, or will be
| replaced by the platforms themselves. it's like a business on
| 1000 other people's platforms.
| fabiandesimone wrote:
| They do 125MM in rev a year. Seems we have different scale
| systems because that's quite the number.
| rwhitman wrote:
| I work for a team that specializes in middleware development - eg
| the cases where Zapier really falls apart and needs a more
| thoroughly architected solution. I've spent a lot of time inside
| this topic.
|
| The thing that will disrupt Zapier is the software vendors
| themselves. Most Zaps will eventually be replaced by native
| platform-to-platform integrations where the middleware has been
| designed and sanctioned by the 2 parties. Having a one-size-fits
| all solution is impractical over the long run. Its a temporary
| fix for a bigger more substantial problem.
|
| This is plumbing. You don't use one flimsy universal type of pipe
| joint for every pipe in your house, otherwise you get leaks. Same
| thing
| calltrak wrote:
| alimov wrote:
| n8n.io offers something similar to Zapier, but probably not as
| well rounded.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Zapier has a large moat.
|
| I would like to think anything you can bring to the table to
| compete or add value (maybe flow-based logic rules or inclusion
| of serverless script-level transforms similar to pipedream) could
| be cherry picked and added onto zapier with little stress. I'll
| add that it is relatively trivial to wire your own serverless
| function into zapier to this end. One thing lacking from the
| article as a niche proper webhook management (ie hookdeck).
|
| There are many industry-niche api-interchange products out
| there... many predating Zapier and remaining the defacto in that
| industry. Think logistics, ERP and finance systems.
|
| As much of a case that can be made for unbundling - I don't think
| such can be said for zapier and the breadth of moat they've
| created. Zapier integrations on a given SaaS usually don't hold a
| candle to native/direct, but they are certainly universal.
|
| I'm very curious to hear a concrete example of a segment/industry
| and how it could be "unbundled", but unfortunately there is none
| in the article.
|
| SOC/PCI compliance? Remember Microsoft Flow (now called Microsoft
| Power Automate)? Hundreds of connectors and deep integration into
| azure/microsoft platform... all underwritten and stamped by
| Microsoft's level of enterprise.
|
| Looking at that ARR growth curve, they've certainly demonstrated
| the value of wide integration over deep/niche integrations.
|
| The only argument to be made here for market displacement is that
| a cheaper alternative would come about offered as a loss leader
| by big tech, or an open data interchange standard/paradigm could
| come abound and disrupt the necessity of this.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| `I'm very curious to hear a concrete example of a
| segment/industry and how it could be "unbundled", but
| unfortunately, there is none in the article.`
|
| Alloy Automation is making a better Zapier for E-commerce:
| https://runalloy.com/
|
| Anvyl is making a better Zapier for supply chain:
| https://anvyl.com/
|
| That being said. I think that you're right! Trying to just take
| workflows (or zaps) from Zapier is not going to be the best
| move. These companies have focused on their verticals and
| started building a product where automation is a feature, not a
| product. Anvyl for example is a pane-of-glass for supply-chains
| orders/parts/sourcing along with automation to supplement the
| experience. I believe Alloy is trying to become an E-commerce
| CRM. Their wedge has been enabling some tricky workflows that
| aren't well supported in Zapier.
| alberth wrote:
| 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.
| crisnoble wrote:
| I am a software developer, have a paid professional plan, and
| am almost out of my "zaps".
|
| Here are a two of my favorites:
|
| * Non profit community organization wants to sell event
| tickets. Paypal Order -> Add row to spreadsheet for simple
| reporting -> Add/Update user in mailchimp with a tag so they
| don't get future emails asking to buy tickets again.
|
| * Small client wants a gated webinar signup. Wordpress Contact
| Form -> Zapier Endpoint POST -> Add user to Zoom Registration
| -> Add/Update to mailchimp with a source tag -> Add row in
| spreadsheet
|
| Could these be done without zapier? Sure. But using zapier we
| can create that within 30 minutes without a server, or even
| dealing with serverless. Even if someone had those workflows as
| a one click install for lambda workflow, I would rather use
| zapier than deal with any AWS overhead.
|
| To everyone who thinks that "a webform to google docs" is the
| most common use case you are probably right. If you think that
| you could create the infrastructure to do that consistently
| with automatic retries, logging, error handling, keep on top of
| API changes from both ends, across dozens of clients, proper
| authorization and secret management, for cheaper than
| $50/month, then you are kidding yourself.
| mauricio wrote:
| A popular use case for SaaS companies isn't even in utilizing
| Zapier themselves, but rather adding their API to the list of
| integrations. This can really speed up onboarding for customers
| -- especially if they already use Zapier.
| contravariant wrote:
| 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.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| if you have to ask you are not in the need to know, this is an
| automation tool for non-developers at various organizations
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >if you have to ask you are not in the need to know
|
| Does it really need to be said that we don't all know about
| every program/service available to us that we could use, and
| thus could occasionally use someone telling us about them?
| avipars wrote:
| Are they in direct or indirect competition with IFTTT and also
| Microsoft PowerAutomate... How much space is in the industry for
| these no-code automation tools?
| kfk wrote:
| UI based flows for integrations are as bad as UI based flows for
| ETL. For some reason, we managed to move past UI to code for ETL,
| but now we are taking the exact same path for integrations.
| Integrations are complex, you might have complex requirements,
| polling and pushing needs depending on the applications, fast
| lookups needs, legacy IT solutions that hold critical data. I
| don't think we are ready to go full UI in this space, I think
| good orchestration and good microservices are still a better
| choice.
| te_chris wrote:
| UI is bad for ETL...huh? I hope you're not talking about
| Stitch/Fivetran, because they're a godsend in my experience.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| Depends where those UIs are on. If you have some sort of
| agreement set in place where they won't update the interface,
| then this is very much possible.
|
| If it is relying on an 3rd party platform that you can't
| control and not know when UI changes are coming, then it can be
| bad for criticality.
|
| However, I fail to know how urgent criticality is in ETL space,
| especially when UI changes can be as simple as "theres a new
| button" or "margin on form changed". The key process features
| and UI related to it would rarely change.
| intrasight wrote:
| Zapier could easily add a DSL that mirrors their UI. It's not
| the UI that makes it powerful, it's the integrations and
| workflow.
|
| My approach to integration for ETL was a DSL.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yeah, this is almost the sentiment behind the snarky comment I
| made that got voted down.
|
| The difference is I am not so pessimistic about those UI-based
| ETL systems because I did a deep dive on the architecture of
| those and even worked for a startup that built one. I've seen
| how the industry's fixation on raw performance has kept ETL
| systems using a relational model that is hell to program for
| complex jobs -- I pitched a next generation system to a very
| acquisitive leader in this space and got shot down because my
| system wasn't friendly to storage locality and SIMD
| instructions. (That startup had the right idea of passing
| 'JSON' documents between the lines and the boxes but never
| settled exactly what the algebra was for those things, how to
| close event pipelines in the end properly so you always get the
| right results, ...)
|
| Those "integration builders" though strike me a way of
| replacing a 10 line Python script with incredible tedium and
| "you can't get from here to there" experiences. That leads me
| to say things like "When I hear the word 'integration' I reach
| for my gun."
| andybak wrote:
| How about catering to non-programmers?
| kfk wrote:
| There is a space for that for sure, but when things get
| serious, the programming bit is 10% of the capability, domain
| knowledge, data expertise and SQL become more relevant. Those
| skills are not fulfilled with UI tools. Sometimes in fact UI
| tools make the skill gap bigger because new hires might know
| SQL, but for sure don't know your expensive proprietary tool
| of choice.
| supersync wrote:
| Check out Make, n8n, workflow86
|
| Agree that coded integrations are still very relevant, but the
| addressable surface for UI is pretty large now.
| ngz00 wrote:
| 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.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| 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!
| ngz00 wrote:
| Thats pretty fascinating stuff, thanks for the
| recommendation.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Maybe Airbyte if I understand what you're asking correctly.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| Ah right. Yeah, reverse-engineering Airbyte's DSL and
| just "borrowing" their UI generation may be the move.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| > UI based flows for integrations are as bad
|
| Right but in the same breath we should mention all code is
| terrible.
| dnndev wrote:
| This is great news. Just made me realizer we are building the
| zapier for healthcare. Its a fairly new product, but this puts a
| label on the beast.
| someotherperson wrote:
| 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.
| dnndev wrote:
| email sent!
| georgesequeira wrote:
| also interested, if you're up for it! (also email in
| profile)
| alooPotato wrote:
| Our customers of [Streak](www.streak.com) use zapier heavily to
| connect to all their other tools so we have a ton of experience
| with it. We're currently building an alternative for our users
| natively into our app (we think we can make a more optimized
| experience for our app).
|
| I think we've stumbled onto a pretty key product insight - we're
| basing our automation tool on a spreadsheet. Zapier is clearly
| optimized for non-technical users so doing any logic, even basic
| if statements, is really cumbersome. On the other end of the
| spectrum, pipedream and tools like it rely on your users knowing
| how to code. We think spreadsheets are the perfect balance, most
| users (at least ours) know how to do basic formulas and
| understand references.
|
| Spreadsheets are awesome:
|
| - development environment is completely set up for you, no
| tooling needed
|
| - editor, runtime, debugger are all the same tool
|
| - by default you see the _output_ of all your computation, its a
| secondary action to see the code
|
| - you can preview the intermediate data results at every step of
| your computation making debugging a dream
|
| Here's how we're thinking of applying it to the Zapier use case:
|
| - a series of zapier like triggers and actions
|
| - each step is just a 2 column spreadsheet (property name and
| property value)
|
| - the value can be something hardcoded, a reference to a value in
| a previous step, or a complicated formula
|
| Anyone tried something like this before?
| kamalfariz wrote:
| Clay is basically Zapier applied to a spreadsheet UI
| https://www.clay.run/
|
| You can set up each column to hit an integration. As a cell is
| populate either by hand or from the result of an integration,
| it triggers other cells to evaluate.
| alooPotato wrote:
| Cool - checking it out!
| robocat wrote:
| I had designed a similar system for consultant customisation of
| complicated business rules, although I failed to deliver it. I
| had intended to:
|
| * Have one workbook per business function. One inputs sheet
| (variables in), one sheet for the formulas, one outputs sheet
| (variables out).
|
| * Use a sort of test driven, self documenting approach. When
| developing with clients, it is easiest to ask them about
| specific examples, including simple and complicated ones.
| Consultants understand business rules when they configure a
| system, but it is very hard to come back to 5 years later when
| the business wants something tweaked. Test data inputs and
| expected outputs was to be included on other sheets, with
| documentation. And the system would validate the sheet formulas
| gave the correct outputs for the example inputs.
|
| * Use custom formulas for our industry needs with a custom data
| type for some variable inputs - this is the crux of where I
| came unstuck with my design (it was kind of SQLish table inputs
| per input cell, visible in Excel when in design mode).
|
| I didn't actually finish the system, because I was trying to
| bidirectional integrate directly with Excel using COM, and I
| just couldn't get that working because I overcomplicated it.
| This was a long time ago, and I couldn't find a suitable non-
| excel engine to integrate with due to other team constraints.
| Note that spreadsheets are inherently side effect free
| functional programming at its finest IMHO: I wanted to avoid
| any imperative programming. However we ended up with an
| imperative Visual Basic like design instead which did work, but
| it takes extremely highly skilled consultants to use it, and is
| spectacularly inefficient.
| alooPotato wrote:
| Why did you decide to separate the input, formula and output
| into different sheets?
| 1minusp wrote:
| How is this different than workflow automation (for non-
| developers) solutions? Or is the takeaway that any workflow
| automation is ripe for unbundling?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Ding ding ding.
|
| This is what needs to happen.
|
| To provide one painful example that I'm currently dealing with,
| at work we have a Marketing Automation platform, a CRM and a CX
| tool. Marketing use the MAP, sales use the CRM and customer
| success the CXM.
|
| All 3 have their own data schemas, their own "customer view",
| their own segmentation tools, they own orchestration
| (workflows) tool, etc. Everything exists in a silo, and no one
| can see the big picture.
|
| This area absolutely needs disruption, we're starting to see
| some of it at the MAP level with MessageGears, Vero and
| Supergrain but it's yet to feed through to those other customer
| facing functions as far as I've been able to see.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| I think it's two things
|
| Is the workflow automation tool big enough that subgroups of
| users are still a big number of users to service
|
| Of those subgroups, does one (or more) stand to have a better
| product experience if someone focused on their core use-cases /
| workflows. (e.g. Reclaim takes a bunch of calendar automation
| around scheduling and makes a product that reduces the work
| needed to optimize your calendar).
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Reddit is the B2C version of Zapier here. It's _ripe_ for
| unbundling. You 're safe from Reddit itself because historically
| they've moved _very_ slowly for some reason (though marginally
| faster, lately), and you 're safe from the big players (Google,
| Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) because of Reddit's reputation for
| going after a (now) older, "savvy" customer base that is hard to
| monetize.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| Good podcast on unbundling reddit: https://thehustle.co/reddit-
| unbundling/
| jdrc wrote:
| Also their perpetually young audience means that it's
| inherently not suitable for lots of kind of communities.
| asim wrote:
| We're playing in this space with M3O (https://m3o.com) but
| focused very much on making APIs programmable as opposed to
| completely doing away with the code.
| duxup wrote:
| >The process of companies building products that strip away use-
| cases from horizontal platforms is called "unbundling".
|
| Is there a more plain English explanation what this means?
|
| I didn't understand their explanation, and then they showed
| Zapier that seems to be a service that relies on automating some
| tasks based on one or more other service .... that seems to be
| very "bundled" in my mind now that you've got two or more
| services heavily reliant on each other...
| psds2 wrote:
| My understanding of how the term was used is this: Zapier has
| many use cases. Many customers buy Zapier for one or two use
| cases, not all the features offered. New startups are emerging
| that accomplish a subset of the use cases that Zapier
| addresses.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I suspect what the author is trying to say in plain english is
| that Zapier is prime for being copied to a more focused
| business case.
|
| ie, ITTT/zapier have proven that this idea works, lets
| copy+paste one but aimed at some other more specific
| business/scenario like catering or some junk.
|
| Its a more jazzy version than "lets make an uber, but for
| farts."
| dnndev wrote:
| unbundling = offer higher quality integrations for a specific
| audience. zapier for marketers would be an unbundled zapier
| example.
| duxup wrote:
| I think I got it now. Thank you.
| tbran wrote:
| The graphic in this short article [0] that shows the numerous
| companies "unbundled" from Craigslist is worth the click and
| will help you instantly understand the concept.
|
| [0]: https://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-
| of-c...
| chriskelley wrote:
| The article is saying that Zapier is ripe to be unbundled.
|
| Meaning it does many different things across many verticals,
| and that some of them are big enough that a company could be
| created around building a more specialized / better version of
| zapier just for a specific vertical.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Unbundled implies that the company it's self splits up and
| focuses on a specific "vertical"
|
| In this instance I would argue that the author is saying
| clone the idea but make sure the APIs offered are for a
| specific subsection of an industry.
|
| Or more succinctly: jump on the bandwagon in the style of
| hipstermatic/instagram gold rush.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Zapier is a god send for the non developer portions of a company.
|
| I work in marketing. Marketing projects are inherently
| speculative, you don't know what they will achieve until they're
| done. Add to this that dev teams at every company have full
| sprints planned for months. Getting a marketing project done
| through the dev team is months of exertion and sweat.
|
| Or... get Zapier approved by security, get platforms plugged in
| officially, nice and tidy. And then the marketers can do what
| they need in the platform, and they're able to iterate and learn
| at a much faster pace. It changes the whole game.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I should look into more features with it. Right now I mainly
| use it to link my Slack and GitHub presence. Very very useful
| since I get all sorts of notes from folks on both platforms.
| It's been critical to avoid having things fall through the
| cracks. I keep a special private slack channel that has
| slackbot message me whenever someone pings me on GH and lays
| out all the relevant info.
| rockostrich wrote:
| > get Zapier approved by security
|
| How do you manage this when marketing relies on PII to do
| anything? We just went through a switch over to a multi-channel
| messaging SaaS from an internal solution that "worked" for 6
| years. Handling the PII aspect of things was taken care of by
| the SaaS being SOC 2 and GDPR compliant, but something like
| Zapier seems like it gives users the control to move PII into
| systems that don't have that compliance. Or are there controls
| around which data can flow where?
| Kalium wrote:
| Long story short, you _don 't_. No competent security
| organization taking their responsibilities seriously is going
| to issue a blanket approval of something as broad as Zapier.
|
| What you can do is get an enterprise relationship in place,
| deploy tight endpoint monitoring and management, careful
| management of permissions at every level, and then make the
| review processes relatively fast. Not marketing-wants-to-
| build-a-whole-new-thing-with-lots-of-PII-tomorrow fast, but
| fast. Having strong systems for generating realistic test
| data and systems will make this prototyping much easier,
| though from experience Marketing will tend to dismiss such
| things.
|
| Marketing's needs and goals are real and important and valid
| and blah blah blah blah. Mostly their institutional
| incentives are to barrel ahead as fast as possible with any
| and every tools available. A security organization's remit is
| to make sure that this isn't reckless and liability-inducing,
| which often means dialing back the speed from breakneck to
| manageable and maybe even doing some token amount of planning
| around what you hope to achieve.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Yep, in small companies you get carte blanche, and there
| are two kinds of big companies. Those that make it work
| with a process like the above comment (which looks like a
| great and reasonable set-up), and those that kneecap their
| marketing departments by rejecting the tools needed for
| modern marketing.
|
| As a side note, I've worked with 60+ startups. One thing
| that kills start-ups whenever it happens is giving too much
| power too early to the "default to no" departments of a
| company - security, legal, brand.
| Kalium wrote:
| It's been my experience that default-to-no is what
| happens when groups like security _try_ a reasonable
| process... and find that marketing and similar
| enablement-first groups handle this by ignoring and
| bypassing it. This tends to set up a very ugly reckoning
| at some point. Marketing will lose, but the company
| overall will lose too.
|
| If marketing ever says "But an enterprise contract with
| SAML is too expensive! Can't we just use the basic SaaS
| version?", it's time to check what other processes
| they're used to ignoring. I'd suggest starting with
| expense records. There's probably a bunch of vendors
| handled entirely on a director's credit card.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This is how sites get burdened with a half dozen analytics
| scripts.
| LunaSea wrote:
| This would have been true 5 years ago but based on the current
| pricing, any non-trivial use case is far more expensive than
| identical internal development and maintenance.
| Dwolb wrote:
| One time, when we were much smaller and a team of 10, we had a
| marketer who also thought they were a developer.
|
| Instead of choosing an off-the-shelf tagging solution like
| Google Tag manager, they used Zapier + custom injected code
| into Wordpress + Segment to attempt to hand-roll a "marketing
| tech stack".
|
| All the data was wrong and all the integrations would break
| constantly. Eventually we moved on and a team had to figure out
| how to rip out all the code and deprecate the integrations.
|
| We ended up just moving to a new CMS to start clean.
| dnndev wrote:
| 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)
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Indeed, this unbundling is already happening. Many of the so-
| called Customer Data Platforms offer a low-code, no-code
| option for creating and iterating on marketing campaigns.
| They've already done the work of integrating with the various
| storefronts and ad platforms.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Facebook and LinkedIn leads ads to
| Marketo/Hubspot/Salesforce, Facebook Conversion API from
| Salesforce to FB are vital connections for B2B companies.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| Would love to hear more about your experience with these
| platforms. Thought they were mostly plug-n-play these days.
| Could I email you?
| tucaz wrote:
| 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.
| bag_boy wrote:
| Google form > email action was my best use case
| crisnoble wrote:
| Even if that was literally all it could do, it would easily
| be worth $50/month for marketing teams.
| dsaavy wrote:
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I was wondering too. Not that people wouldn't use it,
| but I wonder about what the transition is from "this is
| handy" to "I want to continuously pay for this service /
| enough that it is consistent enough / earns me money back
| enough to do this and not something else".
| dshanahan wrote:
| Great convo, thought I'd share some valuable zaps I've used
| over the last few years to save $$$ on headcount, dev time,
| and burn/debt on unproven ideas/experiments.
|
| - Slack - pipe all kinds of events into special #channels to
| cross teams can check one spot for external happenings: new
| users, new sales, support chats, form/data submissions
|
| - Forms > CRM/Sheets - shouldn't be understated. Using lead
| page or no-code CRM (webflow my fave) I've swapped out
| various signup flows to test ideas/friction/followups
| repeatedly before asking dev to build actual signup flows
| into the backend app. Can swap paperform, typeform,
| mailchimp, google forms in under an hour for multiple
| signup/landing pages w/o any devs.
|
| - Calendar - I use Motion (similar to Calendly) across sales
| team to speed up meeting flows + use Zaps to pipe those
| bookings into sheets/Slack/CRM or EMS. Sales team calendars
| can be public on marketing site (webflow) and bookings
| generate all the alerts and data we need to just show up to
| the meetings.
|
| - Leverage SMS channel - One-click surveys, recurring survey
| campaigns using SimpleTexting or YesInsights and piping
| results wherever I need 'em. Google Sheet with charted
| dashboards already set up to auto-update. Great for ecomm,
| great for call/response feature testing with zero dev
| required. Can add phone signups via form integration or email
| campaign.
|
| - Manual issue / todo alerts: Use specific tag in Asana to
| pipe a ticket into Slack channel when team member wants to
| surface for manager/teammate - instead of asana firehose
|
| - Light @mention feed - Pipe brand mentions/topics, including
| web (reddit etc - use F5bot) into sheet or #channel for
| marketing eyes to check daily
|
| - Twitter bot - built @carryonbagsizes using just Zaps:
| anyone tweets airline name and gets carry-on bag size
| restrictions back from the bot (including variations on
| airline names ie United vs United Airlines)
| Dwolb wrote:
| Piping user data into Sheets is literally my nightmare.
|
| Especially if there's any sort of editing or data transform
| in sheets, there's 0 traceability of the change.
| samstave wrote:
| Can you please share some example workflows enabled by Zapier
| that benefits your org?
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| 1. New demo booked via Calendly --> find/create deal in CRM
| --> send Slack message to #notifications-sales
|
| 2. New app sign up --> webhook to Zap --> create new deal in
| CRM --> create new contact in email automation platform -->
| send a Slack message to #notifications-signups
|
| 3. New in-app purchase --> Update CRM Deal as 'Won', update
| Deal LTV --> push Slack notification --> change email
| sequence from 'free trial' to 'paid subscriber'
|
| 4. New Facebook Group member --> add as contact in email
| automation platform and subscribe to 'Facebook Group' email
| list
|
| 5. New charge in stripe --> update CRM LTV value
| stevesearer wrote:
| Not marketing, but we use it to automate some WordPress
| tasks.
|
| WordPress Gravity Forms submission -> Zapier -> Airtable to
| assign calendar -> Zapier -> Create WordPress draft
|
| Have someone fill out a structured Google Sheet -> upload to
| private Gravity Form -> Zapier to process > Create WordPress
| draft
|
| I'm sure I could spend time figuring out how to do this stuff
| directly in WP with coding, but it is nice to connect
| existing things together relatively easily as a first step.
| KnobbleMcKnees wrote:
| > Add to this that dev teams at every company have full sprints
| planned for months. Getting a marketing project done through
| the dev team is months of exertion and sweat.
|
| I'm confused by this, can you clarify?
|
| This sounds like the exact opposite of agile sprints (assuming
| you're talking about agile)
| guitarsteve wrote:
| It doesn't sound too far off from what I've seen. The details
| of the sprints may not be worked out, but a dev team might
| have several months of high priority project queued up and
| marketing might be deemed lower priority. So getting extra
| work done from another team can sometimes take a very long
| time.
| mylons wrote:
| 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.
| ahtihn wrote:
| I fail to see how it's not agile? Roadmaps aren't against
| agile. If marketing is low priority and there's a large
| backlog of high priority work, marketing related work is
| never going to be considered when planning a sprint.
|
| The only way around this is to have more dev capacity or
| to prioritize marketing work.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| 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.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Does your product not generate data that would be useful
| for the marketing team?
| dijonman2 wrote:
| This is typical of product driven organizations. Has nothing
| to do with agile itself.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Yeah, it's a question of prioritizing which projects make
| it into the pipeline. Marketing automation is often
| subordinate to automation projects for other departments
| like Finance and Operations when it comes to
| prioritization.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| As a Marketing Ops guy, this gives me pause.
|
| > nice and tidy. And then the marketers can do what they need
| in the platform, and they're able to iterate and learn at a
| much faster pace. It changes the whole game.
|
| The reality is, marketers will frequently plug in any and every
| thing they can without thinking about the broader context. Sure
| you can plug all this stuff together, or you can spend a bit of
| time with ETL and rETL tools and develop a stack that isn't
| reliant on a bunch of third party silos.
| bduerst wrote:
| >or you can spend a bit of time with ETL and rETL tools and
| develop a stack that isn't reliant on a bunch of third party
| silos
|
| This is the real future of 'unbundling'.
|
| I love reading this article because while it sets up the
| problem and solution proposition quite well, all I could
| think of was how the author is proving reverse-ETL engines (&
| not their own platform) are the best investment right now.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| At the end of the day, most business owners don't want to
| connect all these tools together. It just allows them to
| accomplish business outcomes. What makes their job hard is
| keeping track where all the data is and how to know if
| things are working.
|
| Solutions to that problem can take shape as a CRM (and
| keeping it updated) or something as dumb as a dashboard of
| dashboards.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Agreed. It's a common trap of technologist thinking: if
| we gave people better access to primatives, they'd have
| more power to assemble what they wanted!
|
| In fact, it's "assembling" that most people hate. Which
| is why products that sacrifice power to limit assembly
| tend to be successful.
| emteycz wrote:
| 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). Not all operations are
| huge companies that can afford IT teams working on their
| behalf.
| borisjabes wrote:
| it refers to a somewhat poorly named concept known as
| reverse ETL, something we started working on back in 2018
| with our product Census (getcensus.com). We launched it on
| HN in 2020, though it's come a long way since then :-)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23034642
| emteycz wrote:
| Nice, definitely solves some problems I had in the past.
| I'll keep your product in mind, I like it very much.
| bduerst wrote:
| Think of rETL as an on-demand data lake that doesn't
| actually store any data (for the most part).
|
| Yeah you can pull data and create snapshots to preserve
| views, but given the direction privacy and regulatory
| environments have been going with user data, it's
| incredibly sexy to be able to not have to dump data in yet
| another data warehouse just to use a new tool.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| 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.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What does the L mean then?
| me_bx wrote:
| E - Extract
|
| T - Transform
|
| L - Load
| emteycz wrote:
| Thanks for the links, I'll have a look.
| boc wrote:
| 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 if it turns
| out to be a productive campaign.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| 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.
| boc wrote:
| Right - it sounds like you're processing data at a very
| different scale from the typical Zapier user.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Yeah, potentially, though I think you'd be surprised at
| the size of teams still using it.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Zapier is vulnerable to disruption both ends of the
| dev/integration chain (code/no-code), and they have been for some
| time. Their primary edge (IMHO) is a huge ecosystem of
| integrations unmatched by their competition. I don't see that
| edge persisting. It won't be long before OpenAI-esque UI's can
| generate no/low code integrations and as you'll see below there
| is plenty of conventional competition.
|
| They've had adequate funds and time to implement bulk actions,
| interface improvements and ecosystem enhancements that would
| benefit users, but not much has emerged. I use Zapier and some of
| the providers below as alternatives:
|
| Integromat
|
| Pipedream
|
| Mulesoft
|
| Jitterbit
|
| Built.io
|
| Workato
|
| JBoss
|
| Celigo
|
| Parabola.io
|
| Integrate.io
|
| IFTT
|
| CloudHQ
|
| MixMax
|
| Regardless, as a private company they're really only beholden to
| their owners, and they generate enough revenue (and presumably
| NET profit) that one could imagine ownership perhaps confusing
| focus for what might (or might not) actually be arrogance.
| malfist wrote:
| low/no-code ecosystems have been promised to be "just around
| the corner" for decades now. I'll be really surprised if it
| ever arrives. Take a look at microsoft's "LightSwitch"
| jcal93 wrote:
| Zapier is really awesome for the non-tech crowd. I think this
| space is only going to continue to grow. I decided to build
| https://atlasconnex.com for developers who need more fine-grained
| control, but don't want to stand up their own infrastructure. The
| project is recently launched, so the number of connectors is
| growing rapidly. One my favorite (again, I'm the developer!)
| connectors is the "build your own" connector. You define a Python
| function and declare a period for it to run (once/min up to
| once/24hrs) and then you can do basically whatever you need
| inside that function. So if you need to poll an API endpoint, or
| pull a file from an SFTP server etc., you can create events based
| on that data that are then processed through transformers and
| filters and then delivered to their final destination.
| samstave wrote:
| Zapier should do a Google and offer a self-hosted " _Zapier
| Engine_ " box that one can self host...
|
| (Anyone recall the Google Search boxes from ~2007? Are they still
| avail?
|
| We installed some at Lockheed in ~2006 or something... never saw
| the ROI on that thing...
|
| but a zapier host on a closed network, I can see the ongoing
| value of such...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Whenever I see people struggling with "integration" I find
| they're always using the word "integration".
| ghoomketu wrote:
| Zapier is also have trouble keeping up with the demand. Their
| Youtube integration hasn't worked in almost 2 months now and I
| think it's because Google has stopped giving them enough API
| quota to meet the demand. The thread has been locked since and I
| don't think there is any resolution coming.
|
| (1)https://community.zapier.com/general-questions-3/youtube-
| the...
| kfarr wrote:
| In fairness this seems more line a Google issue than a Zapier
| issue.
| bognition wrote:
| Or maybe the ROI on the integration just isn't there.
|
| Good integrations are hard to build and expensive to maintain.
| I've seen many sunset or ignored simply because the paying
| customer base was too small.
| adameasterling wrote:
| So I'm pretty sure this is the technology revolution that we're
| all sleeping on.
|
| Like, self-driving cars? VR? Meh.
|
| Accessible programming? A safe environment for folks close to a
| business problem that lets them solve that business problem on
| their own?! _That 's_ cool.
|
| Like for me, in my experience as a software engineer, there's
| basically four types of employees: The tech-naive domain expert,
| the tech-friendly domain expert, junior coders, and senior
| engineers.
|
| The two ends of the spectrum should stay focused on they're good
| at: Doing business stuff, or coding on tough problems.
|
| It's the two roles in the middle that interest me: Tech-friendly
| domain experts and junior coders.
|
| Right now, in most companies, tech-friendly domain experts could
| _totally_ figure out a tool like Zapier and do things that they
| 'd normally need an engineer to do. But their company doesn't use
| something like Zapier, so they can't. They just have to talk to
| technical people and make them do it. But there lies long
| debugging loops and, just, slowness.
|
| In some companies though, those that have embraced low-code
| platforms like Tray or Zapier or the product we made
| (https://docs.middle.app), they've enabled their tech-friendly
| domain experts to do tons of stuff they couldn't do before,
| without bothering people like myself, a more senior coder (I can
| work on platform things!).
|
| ALSO, I've found that junior coders have a special role. We've
| hired non-programmers and taught them Python JUST so they could
| code new things in the developer side of our integration
| platform. It's a sandboxed environment with limited risk; they
| can go crazy coding whatever connectors or other things that
| those tech-friendly domain experts need. I don't have to be
| involved, outside of a code review every now and then. I know
| that they can't break anything other than the narrow thing
| they're working on.
|
| It's neat. Neat stuff.
| oldandboring wrote:
| The article describes an idea that there are startup
| opportunities to be found by identifying horizontal platforms
| (e.g. Craigslist) that cover a lot of ground and build something
| that handles just one use case (e.g. job posts) covered by that
| platform. The article calls it "unbundling".
|
| A while ago I was involved in a startup that attempted to compete
| with a dominant horizontal platform in this manner (Craigslist,
| in fact). The ideas were fine, the people were good, but we had a
| lot of trouble getting traction. Turns out, Craigslist is where
| the people are, and if you want to build a marketplace, you need
| people. Features turn out to be secondary. It's unsurprising to
| me that, in the end, the best competition for Craigslist came
| from another big horizontal platform with tons of people:
| Facebook.
|
| I'm not actually trying to say that "unbundling" can't ever work.
| Maybe Zapier is ripe for it, as the author suggests. This is just
| what happened to come to mind when I read this story.
|
| Interesting overall. Thanks for the post OP!
| joshmlewis wrote:
| I feel like Facebook Marketplace was really the only way to
| disrupt Craigslist because it is where the users are. There
| were lots of products that tried over the years with varying
| degrees of success, but mostly failure. I'm not saying it is a
| better replacement either, but as far as I can tell it's
| effectively stolen most of Craigslists utility. I joked the
| other day that the only people left on Craigslist now are
| scammers and older people.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Disruption is still very regional. Where I live Kijiji (Ebay)
| is dominant, in other locales it's still Craigslist. FB
| Marketplace is still an "and also" player but not dominate
| here
| hikerrrr wrote:
| Facebook is not the largest 'classifieds' marketplace, at least
| not everywhere, and it did not disrupt craigslist everywhere.
|
| There are multiple other successes to replicate the
| classified/craigslist model:
|
| Other good notable and successful local models offerup, maybe
| somewhat ebay.
|
| FB Marketplace only began to overtake craigslist if there was
| not another dominant space in the area.
|
| Here in Utah, the dominant newsmedia made a brilliant use of
| their traffic to bundle their news traffic with a more
| reputable and useful classifieds. They are still more dominant
| than FB marketplace in Utah, though used about equal now.
|
| Most local newspapers had the right classifieds model before
| craigslist became a behemoth, though without exception local
| papers struggled to capitalize on their traffic and keep the
| flow towards their classifieds.
|
| Classifieds were always the extra cash that gave pure profit to
| newspapers for a large part of their lifetimes. News and stuff
| sorta went hand in hand there for awhile, too bad its random BS
| FB news that's bundled with classifieds now instead of real
| reputable news sources.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| I think the canonical example of 'unbundling' is every startup
| that does a thing that could be done via Excel and streamlining
| the experience around one use-case: time tracking for
| freelancers, inventory management, etc. I hear there's been a
| bunch of money made around making SaaS out of things that used
| to be done in Excel sheets.
| georgesequeira wrote:
| Totally, outside of people trying to make a "smarter" excel
| like Airtable or Rows, different business units will make
| some "template" that lets them run their orgs in excel. Those
| "templates" could certainly be better products.
|
| Packy talks more about how this is also a platform being
| unbundled: https://www.notboring.co/p/excel-never-dies?s=r
| mbesto wrote:
| Has the author just not heard of Jitterbit or Mulesoft?
|
| Tangential rant - I feel like there is this group of
| 20-somethings that just assume that because they haven't heard of
| companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. that they just dismiss them as
| being dumb and boring and then when they analyze a problem space.
| Yet have no idea how a company like P&G operates at a global
| scale (hint - they use software like SAP). Jitterbit and Mulesoft
| essentially sit in that space.
|
| P.S. - Pipedream is a super interesting model, but it's not an
| unbundling play.
| matt3D wrote:
| Don't forget Microsoft Power Automate (and Logic Apps). For
| anyone in the 365 ecosystem these become the default, and yet I
| never seem to see them mentioned alongside the more start-uppy
| stuff like Zapier and Imtegromat.
| mattwad wrote:
| We moved to Discord and most apps only support Slack (looking at
| you, Datadog and Github!). Zapier has saved us in a couple cases
| from having to go back to Slack.
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