Zapier

Bryan, Mike, and I co-founded Zapier in 2011 while living in Columbia, Missouri. At the time, Bryan and I did some freelance work alongside our day jobs, where we worked on a number of web projects for clients. We noticed a pattern emerging among our clients—they were asking us more and more if there was a way to build integrations from one app to another. We found that we both had this problem and decided to tackle this problem with our other co-founder, Mike, at the Missouri Startup Weekend. We used this as a time to develop and build the basis of the product that millions of customers now know and use daily.

The first time we applied to YC, we were rejected. At the time, we were bummed, but the rejection made sense — we applied with a janky product we built at a startup weekend, and we had no customers and no track record. So we went back, found customers, built our first round of integrations, and then decided to apply again. We got in the second time we applied; Mike, Bryan, and I moved to Silicon Valley to go through the whole process. In the end, we raised our only round of funding, $1.3 million in seed funding from YC and Bessemer Venture Partners, which gave us room to grow. For us, YC allowed us to go full time on the company and provided a supportive environment for putting all our time and attention into getting the company off the ground.