Let’s set the stage: It’s Sept. 2011. I’m in Columbia, Mo., at a Startup Weekend event. There are 150 people there, all trying to build a company from the ground up in 54 hours.
Most of the teams have been haphazardly thrown together. Some of their ideas are good. Many of their ideas are not.
But there’s this one team that’s getting some buzz. A buddy clues me in. These guys, he says, are building something big.
I walk over to say hi to their leader. His name’s Wade Foster. And when he introduced me to the company that would eventually become Zapier, even a tech newbie like me could tell: This was a million-dollar company.
And of course, I was wrong.
They actually raised $1.2 million.
Meet Zapier: Internet Super Glue
You remember If This Then That, the tool I spotlighted a few weeks ago? Zaper’s a little like that — except that it’s infinitely more powerful.
Here’s the simple explanation: There’s all this data on the web, but it can’t talk to other data. If you’ve got contacts in Gmail and followers on Twitter and mailing lists on MailChimp, that’s great — but they’re not connected.
What Zapier does is connect these tools. It’s the conduit though which data can talk with other data.
This doesn’t sound sexy, but once you see it in action, you’ll understand why so many people — myself included — are so geeked out over Zapier.
To give you a better sense of what Zapier can do, I sat down for a five-minute Skype chat with Wade, now the CEO of Zapier. In it, he explains:
– How to do anything you want from Gchat
– How to filter out the signal from the noise on Twitter
– And how he personally uses Zapier to make sure that he knows exactly what people are saying about his company
Click here to watch our five-minute chat.
If you’ve already given IFTTT a spin, you should take a few minutes to play around with Zapier. On their home page, they’ve got a list of the 100+ tools they support. You’ll know right away whether or not this is a tool that could really help you.
When you’re ready to test out Zapier, click here. (For most reporters, the free plan will do, but if you really like it, the $15/mo plan gives you a lot more juice.)
Now get out there and tell some great stories today!