Welcome to the Category Surfers where we break down go-to-market strategies so you can build the best SaaS growth engine.

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How Zapier grew to $5B with an integration ecosystem

Zapier is an integrator between thousands of apps that allows teams to send, receive data, and automate manual tasks. They are one of the rare examples of not jumping on a VC hamster wheel.

Product

Like with any vertical product, they have thousands of use cases for hundreds of personas. What’s more impressive is that almost anything is possible with Zapier. They co-led the no-code movement and built an ecosystem of apps within the product. Zapier now supports 6400+ integrations.

Distribution

Zapier has been following the product-led growth strategy since 2012. The distribution engine was fueled by Zapier building key integrations, then more apps asking to be featured on their marketplace. On top of that, programmatic SEO drove awareness across new personas that then requested more integrations. Zapier built an amazing product/distribution flywheel.

Market

Zapier is primarily in the software automation industry (worth about $20B and growing at 16% annually). Since they are a very vertical company (serving thousands of personas/use cases) I’m sure their actual market is 2-3x larger.

Resources

• Zapier’s Homepage Growth Strategy by DemandCurve

• Zapier: The $7B Netflix of Productivity

• Video: How We Bootstrapped Zapier to $35M ARR

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