Podcast
Agents of Scale
Hosted by Wade Foster · EN
Agents of Scale is a show about real stories of AI transformation. Hosted by Zapier CEO Wade Foster, each episode features a candid conversation with a C-suite leader who’s scaling AI across their organization—turning early experiments into lasting change. From mindset shifts to automation breakthroughs, these are the untold stories behind the enterprise AI wave.
11episodes
Episodes
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Guru's Rick Nucci on Building AI Your Team Can Trust
2w ago00:47:05Tap to summarizeRick Nucci has spent more than a decade building AI-native knowledge systems at Guru, long before the current LLM wave. In this episode of Agents of Scale, Rick joins Wade Foster to explain why so many enterprise AI efforts get stuck in pilot purgatory.His core argument: the problem is not just which AI tool a company picks. It is whether the organization has trusted, governed context that every tool can rely on. As Rick puts it, today's models are "wonderfully brilliant" but know nothing about your company by default. Without verified internal knowledge, teams risk confident wrong answers at scale.Wade and Rick discuss what separates individual AI productivity from institutional AI transformation, how agentic systems expose the next operational bottleneck, why accountability still belongs to the person using AI, and how Guru's knowledge agents help teams find stale, conflicting, or unverified information before it spreads.
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How Wistia started shipping nearly 10x feature releases per year
Mar 1900:38:28Tap to summarizeMost companies are scrambling to figure out AI. Wistia did the hard part first — a total culture reset that made a 188-person company operate with the efficiency of a 30-person startup. Then AI poured gasoline on it.Chris Savage co-founded Wistia nearly 20 years ago, grew it to serve hundreds of thousands of businesses, and took on $17 million in debt to buy out investors and stay independent. He joins Wade Foster to unpack what it actually takes to rewire a company's operating system — and why doubling headcount didn't make them ship any faster.One mandate changed everything: ship value to customers every two weeks. Features that had been sitting on six-month roadmaps launched in two weeks. Wistia went from 12 major product updates a year to over 100 — same team size. Chris explains why the bottleneck in software is shifting to taste, how Wistia's new agentic video editor Remix is turning 45-minute sales calls into 3-minute shareable highlights, and what the "ChatGPT moment for video" means for trust in the workplace.Plus: Wade and Chris riff on Block's AI-driven layoffs.Linked ResourcesChris Savage on the Economics of AI Avatars (Sacra)Wistia "Complete Control" — AI-Generated Ad Campaign Deep Dive"The ChatGPT Moment for Video" — Chris Savage on LinkedInWistiaChris Savage on LinkedIn
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Why "Get With the Program" Doesn't Work—Claire Vo on AI That Actually Sticks
Mar 1200:51:13Tap to summarizeProduct and leadership roles are changing—and “PM is dead” still holds. Claire Vo, CEO of ChatPRD (100,000+ users) and former CPTO at LaunchDarkly, Color Health, and Optimizely, joins Wade to talk about what that means for how you show up: as a leader driving adoption or as someone deciding whether to lean in.They cover why CEO "AI Mandates" and headcount freezes don’t move the needle—and what does. Claire shares how she frames AI as career development for skeptics, the rituals that actually stick (AI Fridays, hack weeks, “no lanes”), and why executives have to get hands-on themselves (“era of the hard skill”). She gives concrete ways to start if you’re rusty: the Sunday Scaries Zapier agent, vibe coding a prototype, exec hackathons—and why leader vulnerability makes it safe for everyone to experiment. They also talk about making space for ideas at every level (dogfooding, the “cringe” channel, trading certainty for ambition), what the future product role looks like, and why hiring for willingness to learn and fearlessness about tooling beats tenure. Claire walks through how she’s building ChatPRD with fewer humans—where she’s not constrained and where she still invests in people—as a lens on how work is shifting.In this episode, you’ll hear:- Why “PM is dead” still holds and what the skill of the future looks like for product and leadership.- What actually drives AI adoption—and why CEO edicts don’t.- Why execs’ jobs are changing too and where to start if you’re embarrassed or rusty.- How to create an environment where ideas can come from anywhere.- Why leaning in now is a career move and what hiring looks like when adaptability and tooling matter more than tenure.- How one AI-native company is built: where humans still matter and where they don’t.Guest: Claire Vo — CEO & Founder, ChatPRD. X: @clairevo.
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A Very Different CFO: How Carlos Olea Launched AI Transformation at Howard Hughes
Mar 500:36:52Tap to summarizeMost companies wait for their tech team to lead AI adoption. At Howard Hughes, the push started from the CFO's office.Carlos Olea spent decades mentally cataloging process inefficiencies — as an auditor, he'd spot problems he had no authority to fix; as a finance leader, he'd hit budget or technology walls. When AI broke through both barriers, he pulled out his backlog and started building. His first project? A tool that parsed vendor bids to surface the best value — not just the cheapest price. That small win opened the door to automating lease abstraction, a notoriously manual process in real estate, with higher accuracy than humans.Carlos talks about the risks of being a "very different CFO," why imagination — not tools or budget — is now the real bottleneck, and how he assembled a tiger team that moves at startup speed inside a public company. His playbook for winning over skeptics: fix the tasks everyone hates first.- Why a CFO — not a CTO — became Howard Hughes' AI champion- The decades-long efficiency backlog that finally found its tools- How to pitch AI to your board when you don't have a tech background- Why chasing every new model is the fastest way to accomplish nothing- Building a tiger team that blends enterprise rigor with startup speedCarlos Olea — Chief Financial Officer, Howard Hughes Holdings. A CPA-turned-AI-builder who led the company's first AI investments and now runs its innovation push from the finance function.Howard Hughes Holdings: https://www.howardhughes.com/Carlos Olea on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosolea/
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Can AI Make Recruiting More Human? Kristen Habacht (Elly) on the Hiring Arms Race
Feb 2600:39:06Tap to summarizeRecruiting is in an arms race: job seekers spray AI at every open role; recruiters crank filters to keep up. Nobody wins. ⚡ Kristen Habacht—CEO of Elly and former head of revenue at Trello (then Atlassian) and CRO at Typeform—thinks the fix isn’t more filters. It’s tech that actually learns, so recruiters can do the human work.Wade and Kristen talk about why most ATSs are “filing cabinets,” what “ICP for hiring” would look like, and why Elly never says yes or no to a candidate—only “did you see this? Is it important?” They cover the 1,000-applicants-in-24-hours reality, PLG in talent/HR, bias and AI screening, her take on AI “cheating” in interviews (“who really cares? It shows they know how to use the tool”), and why she’s giving away a lot of free usage instead of buying a billboard. Plus the story of the day she found out Trello was being acquired by Atlassian—and shoved her co-founder thinking he was joking.In this episode, you’ll hear:- 🎯 Why recruiting is broken for both sides and how the current arms race got here.- 📋 What’s wrong with today’s ATSs and why “ICP for hiring” could change the game.- 👥 How Elly keeps humans in the loop—and why the AI never decides anyone in or out.- 🔍 Why keyword search fails hiring (and what Trello’s early PLG hiring had to do with it).- 🤖 Whether AI in interviews is “cheating,” proctored interviews, and what might actually stick.- 🔗 Why TA and HR still don’t talk—and why that has to change.- 🌐 What a “universal job application” could look like—and where Elly is putting its $8M.Guest: Kristen Habacht — CEO, Elly.
Transcribe →Is SaaS really dead? Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot on AI, Vibe-Coding & the Future of Work
Feb 1200:55:21Tap to summarizeIs SaaS about to be replaced by people “vibe-coding” their own apps — or is something deeper at stake? Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, joins Wade to cut through the hype and give a refreshingly practical view of how companies should show up for AI.Dharmesh argues the right question isn’t “How do I compete against AI?” but “How do I compete with AI?” — and explains how culture, curiosity, and a little bit of tinkering unlock real value. From practical starting points for SMBs, to why large SaaS vendors still have a massive advantage, to the power of simulation and retrieval-augmented workflows, this episode maps out what leaders and teams should actually do next.In this episode you’ll hear:Why “compete with AI” beats “compete against AI.”The rituals that help organizations adopt AI (hackathons, demos, and scheduled retries).Low-risk starting points: creation → synthesis → automation → simulation.Why large SaaS companies likely aren’t going extinct — and when vibe-coding does make sense.How AI can amplify careers: automate the small stuff, get promoted to bigger problems.Practical ideas for marketing, personalization, and building dynamic UIs that fade into the background.Guest: Dharmesh Shah — Co-founder & CTO, HubSpotSubscribe for more Agents of Scale — actionable conversations with builders, leaders, and product thinkers who are shaping the next era of work.Try Zapier for yourself: https://bit.ly/4hWQES5If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone building for the future.
Transcribe →From First Startup to AI-Powered Scale: Wes Schroll on Building Fetch
Jan 1500:50:54Tap to summarizeMost companies talk about becoming “AI-first.” Very few actually stop the business to make it real.Wes Schroll — Founder & CEO of Fetch — joins Wade to unpack what it actually takes to scale a consumer platform, evolve a decade-old company, and integrate AI without losing focus, culture, or trust. From building his first business at 14 to leading a reward destination that now influences more consumer spend than nearly anyone outside Walmart and Amazon, Wes shares the behind-the-scenes decisions that shaped Fetch’s growth.They dig into Fetch’s business model, how Wes’s perspective on AI shifted from skepticism to urgency, and why leadership had to get hands-on — not delegate AI exploration to a task force. Wes breaks down the decision to shut down the company for a full week so 1,000+ employees could participate in an AI hackathon, the hard lessons learned from early automation missteps, and why simple, readable AI guidelines matter more than fear-based policy.The conversation also explores how AI is changing founder–engineering dynamics, reshaping what counts as a competitive advantage, and lowering the barrier for non-technical leaders to communicate, prototype, and collaborate more effectively.In this episode, you’ll hear:How a founder’s personal AI “aha moment” sparked a company-wide shift.Why task forces fail and hands-on leadership creates real momentum.What Fetch learned from shutting down the company for a week-long AI hackathon.How to evaluate AI aptitude, scalability, and vendor promises realistically.Why short, human-readable AI guidelines outperform long, punitive policies.How AI reduces expertise asymmetry between founders, product, and engineering teams.Lessons on resilience, responsibility, and surviving the emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship.Why using AI isn’t “cheating” — and how leaders must reset that narrative.Guest: Wes Schroll—Founder & CEO, Fetch
Transcribe →Sunlight on Shadow AI: When Security Learns to Tinker—Rob T. Lee from the SANS Institute on AI Risk
Dec 2300:48:27Tap to summarizeMost security playbooks weren’t built for an era where AI moves faster than policy. Rob T. Lee says the default answer of “no” is creating a far bigger problem: shadow AI — widespread, unsanctioned usage that quietly exposes organizations to risk.Rob T. Lee — Chief of Research & Chief AI Officer at the SANS Institute — joins Wade to unpack pragmatic ways leaders can move forward without breaking things. From the “tinker/hacker” mindset that helps teams learn, to treating security like a lifeguard (not a chokehold), Rob lays out the short, repeatable moves that actually get enterprises experimenting safely: enable small experiments, create accountability partners (not mythical “AI champions”), red-team your integrations, and make governance part of the daily routine.In this episode you’ll hear:Why a blanket “no” to AI creates shadow AI and greater risk.How to flip policy toward a cautious “yes” and act like a lifeguard, not a jailer.Practical training tactics: 30 minutes a day, micro-projects, and hackathons.What good AI governance looks like — rules of acceptable use, vendor checks, red teams, and regulatory thinking.Why executives and boards need to be hands-on learners, not just hire an “expert.”The origins and purpose of the SANS Secure AI Blueprint and how to use it to align strategy, governance, and operations.Guest: Rob T. Lee — Chief of Research & Chief AI Officer, SANS Institute
Transcribe →How Orium’s AI Playbook Turned Complexity into 5x Growth
Nov 1300:46:27Tap to summarizeMost enterprise AI talk sounds great in theory—until you try to make it work across 40 disconnected systems. Jason Cottrell says that’s exactly where the real wins are hiding.As CEO of Orium (and the new president of the MACH Alliance), Jason has seen what happens when companies stop chasing one big AI solution and start stacking small, composable ones. The result? For one retailer, a 9-month transformation that led to 5x digital growth—and a repeatable roadmap any enterprise can follow.In this episode, Jason and Wade unpack why “many agents, many jobs” beats the mythical all-knowing AI, how interoperability is quietly rewriting retail, and the cultural shifts that make automation actually stick.
Transcribe →Why Grammarly Became Superhuman—and What It Says About the Next Era of AI
Nov 600:50:49Tap to summarizeGrammarly didn’t just change its company name—it changed the story of AI.In a deep-dive conversation following the company's rebrand, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra joins Zapier CEO Wade Foster to unpack why this move signals a seismic industry shift: AI is moving from tools you have to remember to use to infrastructure that works wherever you do. Superhuman’s “AI superhighway” already makes 100 billion LLM calls a week, running across over 1 million apps and websites where work happens.Shishir shares how Superhuman Go—the company's proactive AI assistant—turns intention into execution, how to run four products as a “compound startup,” and why the next frontier of AI-driven productivity won’t look like traditional software at all.A rare glimpse into a monumental shift—from AI as a product to AI as the plumbing of modern work.
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