This week on How I AI: Zapier's CEO shares his personal AI stack
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Every Monday, host Claire Vo shares a 30- to 45-minute episode with a new guest demoing a specific, practical, and impactful way they’ve learned to use AI in their work or life. No pontificating—just practical and actionable advice.
Zapier’s CEO shares his personal AI stack
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In this episode, Wade Foster (co-founder & CEO of Zapier) shares the actual way he’s leading real AI adoption inside Zapier—by using it hands-on himself to understand company culture, evaluate candidates, and find talent most recruiters never see. We get concrete workflows Wade uses everyday: building interview-evaluation agents, using tools like Grok to surface diamonds-in-the-rough candidates, and analyzing meeting transcripts to uncover Zapier’s “unspoken culture.” He also explains why AI fluency can’t be delegated, how leaders should create safe “play spaces” for experimentation, and why the definition of “top talent” is rapidly changing.
Biggest takeaways:
CEOs must do more than write an “AI memo.” Wade sees many executives fall into the “delegation trap”—writing a memo about AI adoption then expecting it to filter down through the organization. Instead, leaders should create “play spaces” like hackathons and show-and-tells where teams can experiment with AI tools without pressure.
You can build an interview evaluation agent in minutes. Wade demonstrated a simple Zapier agent that analyzes interview transcripts against job descriptions and company values, then recommends whether to advance candidates. This provides an unbiased second opinion that helps catch things human interviewers might miss.
Use Grok to find “diamonds in the rough” talent. While most recruiters focus on LinkedIn, Wade uses Grok to search X/Twitter and YouTube for potential candidates who match specific criteria. This surfaces people who might never appear in traditional recruiting channels—especially in communities that are active on these platforms.
Extract your “unspoken culture” from meeting data. Wade uses Granola’s meeting transcripts with a simple prompt to generate a document that reveals how the company actually operates—not just what’s in the official values doc. This uncovers specific behaviors and expectations that even the CEO hadn’t articulated, creating a powerful tool for hiring, onboarding, and performance management.
Top talent is still in demand everywhere. Despite AI transformation, Wade says Zapier remains “insatiable” for engineering talent and continues hiring across all functions. The difference is that “what it means to be top has changed”—the best people now leverage AI to multiply their impact.
Make AI fluency expectations explicit. Zapier has created rubrics that clearly define AI fluency expectations for different roles. This gives employees specific skills to develop rather than vague directives to “use more AI.”
AI adoption requires hands-on experience. When people actually use AI tools, “some of the fear goes away.” Users quickly discover both the capabilities and limitations, developing a more pragmatic view than the “boogeyman in the closet” portrayed in media narratives.
Use AI to test your stated values against reality. By analyzing how people actually communicate and operate, AI can reveal whether a company’s lived culture aligns with its stated values—giving leaders powerful insights for course correction.
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Catch you next week,
— Lenny
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