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falls on March 11th in the United States to encourage more people to build things online without code. To celebrate this day, we challenged English teacher Alita Leite de Silva (who is not a developer) to build something cool using Algolia’s API-first search tools and the Zapier automation platform. Here’s Alita to explain what she built. National No Code Day Apps are everywhere! There are apps for banking, organizing, or even just sending reminders to water your plants. They’re so common that small businesses like mine are even making their own apps now to send recurring emails or SMS messages to their clients — after all, it’s an effortless and effective way to stay in touch with customers and to continue to generate new business. It takes very little skill. Take it from me; I’m not tech-savvy at all! As an English teacher, I spend a lot of time sending out homework emails, which hardly anyone actually opens… 😒 Oh, the beauty of teaching. Anyways, I thought that maybe I could automate this process and send out a recurring email to my students with a new English expression for them to practice each week, all without wasting time sending these emails myself. Then, we could have a simple, searchable page with all of the English expressions that go out in these emails, for the students to look through as a reference. The problem is, I don’t have one ounce of developing skill within me other than knowing how to turn computers on and off; use the programs I need for teaching like Google Sheets, Docs, and Slides; and I can send out emails and download homework files. I still don’t really even know what code is. But I went off on this journey anyways, and as it turns out, it’s way easier than it seems! And In its simplest form, it goes like this: if I can do it, you can too! Configure a no-code platform like Zapier Find a tool to walk through this whole process without needing to write any code. I found to be super helpful here. If you’d like to follow along, you’ll need to sign up for an account and create a new Zap. Zapier Select a “trigger”, which is basically the app that will initiate the whole process. I chose Schedule by Zapier, since I want my “Expression of the week” email sent out on a weekly basis. Now we need to find a tool to store our information, one that works with Zapier. For this, I chose Algolia. A friend over there recently showed me that they’re building an Algolia/Zapier connector, and he gave me access to an early version of it. If you want to mess around with it too, . you can get access here After that, you’ll need to choose an “action” in Zapier, which is the app that stores your message and sends it out when it gets triggered. If you clicked the link above and walked through the process, you should be able to choose Algolia here. Add your Algolia data source Next, we’ll need to build our data. Algolia will let us fill our database with a , a format that I hadn’t heard of before. JSON file Here’s how it works: First, find a place to write your file. A great option is Microsoft Notepad. Don’t use anything with formatting options like Word or Google Docs. The whole file will be encased in square brackets. is the beginning of the file and is the end. [ ] Inside the square brackets, we’re going to list several , each of which represents one of the English expressions that the students will receive. Objects start and end with curly braces: . You’ll need a comma in between every object. objects {} Be sure to make the JSON organized and well-spaced so you can read it and add to it easily later. Each line inside an object will be a label (in quotes), a colon, and then the value of that label for that object in quotes. My developer friend says it’s custom to make the label start with a lowercase letter, and replace all spaces by capitalizing the first letter of the next words. So a label could be , but not . You’ll also need a comma in between every line inside an object, so all but the last line inside an object will end in a comma. JSON to describe a person might look something like this: expressionOfTheWeek Expression Of The Week {
    "firstName": "Jane",
    "lastName": "Doe"
} In my case, I want Algolia and Zapier to know which information to send to my students on which day, so I have a label on all of the objects in the JSON file, and their values are the dates I want those expressions sent out on. For testing purposes, it’s best to have one object sent out on the day that you’re making your App. Let me show you what my JSON looked like: day Save this as a file. The app you’re using to write it might make you save it as first, but you can rename it later in the screen with all your computer files too. Make sure the Type of the file says “JSON file”. .json .txt Go back to Algolia. Once you , it’ll walk you through the process of creating an application and an index. Once it asks you to upload data, just give it the JSON file we made. sign up for an account In the Algolia index, I had to add as an attribute for faceting, which basically means I’ll be able to send Algolia an instruction to filter all of the search results to just the ones for the day I choose. This is under Configuration > Facets > . day attributesForFaceting Back in Zapier, under the Choose Account dropdown of the Algolia connector app, we can give it our Algolia credentials. Now that our JSON file is done and in the right place, have Zapier run a test search in Algolia. If you have a result available for today, Zapier should pull it in and recognize the labels we set up in our JSON file earlier. Next, you just need to set up your email information. Under “Body”, you can write the email message and insert information from Algolia by clicking on “Run Search in Algolia” in the dropdown that shows up when you start typing. Set the Algolia tags the way they would appear in a sentence like in the screenshot below. What we write in the Body box will be exactly as it shows up in the email, so make sure you get your punctuation and grammar on point 🙂 Putting it all together And we’re done! Now test it out by sending it to yourself to see how it looks in our inbox! Mine looked like this: Zapier will send these SMS or emails out however often you’d like (with a Zapier subscription since we’re using more than the free tier features). Algolia’s main use is that once you have your index set up, they provide all the necessary tools to let your users (or your app, however it works) search through that data. There’s an option under the UI Demos tab in the index to actually make a prototype of a page where you could search through the information in the index, and that page is good enough for me to send to my students so they can automatically see all of the expressions and search through them without having to go through their emails. It’s : a clean, simple display Isn’t it crazy that I was able to do this with such little experience? It just goes to show that the few hours I put into this (even though that’s probably a little longer than most professional developers would take) were well worth it. After all, technology is constantly advancing, and time is becoming more and more valuable, so learning how to get started with automation is extremely valuable. Thanks to the folks at Algolia for giving me some pointers so that going forward, I could focus on giving my clients high-quality services instead of manually sending out repetitive emails. I’m looking forward to seeing my students make that extra push to use everyday English expressions at work with confidence, all thanks to automation like this. So if you’re a non-developer like me, don’t be scared of tools like Algolia just because they’re built to be coder-friendly. You can still automate your business and spend your time on the more important things with just a small time investment by using low-code organizational tools like Zapier. That power is all at our (non-coding) fingertips! So why not give it a try! If you need any help, the folks at Algolia will be just as happy to as they were with me 😉 point you in the right direction Also published . here

Learning English with Zapier and Algolia

If you want to jump straight into creating the ATS, you can skip my rant and scroll down to the section titled ‘Creating our own ATS’. Why we needed an ATS Situation Have you ever thought to yourself, “There’s too much to do and not enough people to do it”? If you’re working at a high-growth startup, I am 100% sure this thought visits your mind frequently. And if you’re the founder, one of your biggest challenges is hiring the right people. And fast! My current predicament was similar. I'm a co-founder at and we are creating the . We had an urgent requirement for 6 positions (across product and engineering), hiring was my Priority #1. Cliff.ai antithesis of dashboards Complication For every position we have, we got 100+ applicants. Managing the entire operations of hiring was getting very overwhelming. Furthermore, all these applicants were coming to us through: Job boards: Angel, Indeed, Naukri Paid listings: Linkedin Campus hiring drives Recruiting agencies DMs on Linkedin and Twitter Cold emails Talking to so many applicants across multiple channels was a mess!! Solution We figured that all problems would be solved if: We implemented an Application Tracking System (ATS) to manage all applicants in one place. We hired a dedicated recruitment manager to operate the ATS, pre-screen applicants, handle all communication, schedule interviews, and any other operational work that might arise. Getting a recruitment manager turned out to be the easy part. But finding an ATS proved way harder than it should have been. The search for an ATS begins When we realised we needed an ATS, our first thought (of course) was to look for a readymade ATS platform. How hard would that be? A simple search on Capterra will show you 559 such platforms. We spoke to sales reps, got on demo calls, signed up for free trials, and started using some of these platforms. This went on for a whole week. To summarise our learnings: “All ATS platforms were either shitty or too expensive” Creating our own ATS First, we made a list of the features we wanted our ATS to have. These were: A central place for all applicants The initial application and all subsequent assignment submissions from applicants should be automatically entered in the ATS (no manual data entry) Custom hiring stages for each job position The ATS should allow us to directly send emails to applicants (using templates) Step 1 We already had a list of job openings. We needed to plan the various rounds for each role. For example, for one of our Software Developer roles we decided to have the following rounds: Initial Assessment Video Assessment Coding Round Take-Home Assignment Technical Interview HR Interview Similarly, we planned the sequence of rounds for all our open job positions. Here's a beautiful flowchart for assessment rounds created by my co-founder Yash. Step 2 . It has the basic tables in place like Applicants, Positions, and Interviewers. Airtable provides a template for an ‘Applicant Tracking System’ We used this as our base and added a new table for each assessment round (mentioned in Step 1) e.g. a new table called ‘Initial Assessment’, a new table called ‘Video Assessment’ etc. Why did we do this? We have a different person evaluating for each role, which means the marketing person doesn’t need to check the coding assignments, and so on. To make the whole process neater, we separated the different assessment rounds. Step 3 Our first aim was to get applicants from all these various platforms (Linkedin, Angelist, etc.) to our Applicant Tracking System. Airtable lets you create many views for the same table. So we created a view for our ‘Applicants’ table. Here we created a small form where an applicant can fill in their details (general stuff like name, email, the position they are applying for, etc.). Form Airtable generates a link for every form you create. Once the form is ready, you can use the ‘Share form’ option to share the link with your applicants, and their responses will directly be recorded in your ‘Applicants’ table. Just click on the Grid view to see all responses! So now all your applicants will be logged into your ATS! 🎉 Step 4 We went to our ‘Initial Assessment’ table and created another Form view. Here we created a short form with questions to get a general understanding of the applicant, their resume, prior experiences, etc. You could club this together with the previous Application form, but we wanted to keep the ‘Apply Now’ form really really simple and quick, to encourage more applicants. Two short forms seem friendlier than one really long form — Me Step 5 In the ‘Positions’ table (it comes with the template), we created a new column for each round, e.g. a column called ‘Initial Assessment URL’, ‘Video Assessment URL’ etc. This was of the type URL. The purpose of this column is to associate each open position with the URL corresponding to each assessment round. Why is this useful? When we create automated email templates, we can ensure the applicants get the correct assessment URL. Since we had a common form for Initial Assessment, we added the Initial Assessment form’s link (as obtained in Step 4) to each row in the ‘Initial Assessment URL’ column. For Video Assessments, we are using a platform called . We created video assessments for each position and added that unique link in the ‘Video Assessment URL’ column for the corresponding position. Hireflix For Coding Assignments, we are using an online compiler called . Once again, we just added the URL to the respective position. Repl.it Step 6 If you’re using the template I mentioned in Step 2, your ‘Applicants’ table is already linked to the ‘Positions’ table by default. In the ‘Applicants’ table, we created a new column for each round. We named these columns ‘Send Initial Assessment’, ‘Send Video Assessment’, ‘Send Coding Assignment’ etc. These were all of the type ‘Checkbox’. Along with this, we created a new Grid view for each assessment round. We named these views the same as the columns (just for convenience. You can name it whatever you want). For example, in the Master view of ‘Applicants’, we have a column with a checkbox called ‘Send Initial Assessment’, and we also have a separate view called ‘Send Initial Assessment’. Now we made the following configurations in the ‘Send Initial Assessment’ view: In the ‘Hide fields’ option, we hid all fields except ‘Email’, ‘Name’, and ‘Send Initial Assessment’ We created a filter Where Send Initial Assessment is ✅ (repeat for all assessment rounds) Now, the moment you put a tick against any applicant in the ‘Send Initial Assessment’ column of the master view, a new row will get added for that applicant in the ‘Send Initial Assessment’ view. This makes it easy to create Zaps (see next step). Step 7 Now we create our Zaps! We created a Zap between Airtable and Gmail. : whenever a new row is created in the view ‘Send Initial Assessment’ Trigger : send an email to the applicant with the URL for the Initial Assessment Action We customised our email templates to include the applicant’s name, the position they are applying for, and the corresponding assessment link. We created these Zaps for each of our assessment rounds. Zapier provides 3 zaps for free. We had a few more than that, so had to choose the paid plan (which isn’t much…starts at $20 a month). Why is this great? Now every time we check the box for ‘Send initial assessment’ for an applicant, the applicant gets an email with a link to the Initial Assessment form. Same for every round. Now our recruitment manager’s job is simply to manage one ATS. Simple, organised, efficient. Conclusion With this easy 7-step process, you can get started with your own Applicant Tracking System. It’s cheap (or even free, if you can get it done within 3 Zaps and skip the video assessment) It’s highly customisable It’s actually a lot of fun to build! I’m sure this process can be made even better. Would love to hear your ideas around this or other interesting no-code projects you have made/seen. Hit me up on or aditya.joshi@cliff.ai! Twitter

How To Create an Applicant Tracking System using Airtable and Zapier in 7 easy steps

Notion, the hottest productivity app of the moment, has been promising an API for quite a while. As of today, the official API is nowhere in sight. In this post, I’ll showcase 4 custom integrations between Notion and Zapier that I’ve built to experiment with Notion’s possible use-cases. Integrating Notion with Zapier I’ve been experimenting with an for a while, after seeing some interesting (although very specific) use cases. unofficial Notion API Recently, I’ve created a way to send generic Zaps to Notion, That solution was limited because it didn’t allow users to create complex integrations for specific use cases. allowing users to build custom zaps. To make the integration more usable, I’ve expanded on the previous project and created 4 custom Notion integrations that you can implement today. The integrations in this article allow you to: Add daily weather data to your Notion page automaticallySend receipt emails from Gmail to a custom Receipt database in NotionTrack incoming mentions and tweets in Notion (including user data)Send tasks from To-Do apps into a Notion database. Let’s dive in. This project is open-source and available here for anyone interested in expanding, refactoring or using it for their own project. Step 1 – Set up a Heroku Server On each of these integrations, you’ll have to set up a Heroku server first. This Heroku instance will be used to add environment variables such as your Notion block’s URL and your Token. Here’s what you need to get started: A account Zapier A account Heroku A notion page/block/database First, find your token and URL There are two parameters that you’ll need to add to the Heroku setup. to find your Notion token, go to your Notion account’s URL and click the lock icon on the left. TOKEN parameter – 2. – get the URL by clicking Share, then “Copy Page Link” on the upper right side. URL Save these two parameters for later. Deploy your own Heroku server Let’s set up a Heroku server that will get requests from Zapier and integrate with your Notion account. 1. Click 2. Name your app (any name will do) 3. Click ‘Manage App’ here We need to add two config vars for the integration to work: 1. TOKEN : <Your Token> 2. URL : <Your URL> Once this is done, you’re ready to set up your Zapier integration. You’ll need the Heroku server’s URL for the next steps, so make sure you copy it. Follow this setup steps before using any of these integrations. Now, let’s continue to the integrations. Integration #1: Add weather reporting to your Notion page Using this integration, you’ll be able to get today’s temperature in your Notion page. You can use the same endpoint (using the exact same parameters) to update any Notion text block based on a string input. 1. Notion Set up a block where you want the temperature to show. Next, copy the block’s URL 2. Heroku Follow the Setup steps from Stage 1 and paste the copied URL into the URL variable. 3. Zapier First, create a recurring zap that fetches weather data daily. Use Schedule by Zapier as the trigger, adding a daily trigger at a specific time. Then, add another step and pick the Weather Zapier app. Fill in the details as shown in the GIF below. Now that your Weather zap is ready, it’s time to send the data to notion. Add your Heroku app’s URL and add Fill in the parameters as shown in the GIF. feel free to customize the value in any way you’d like. You can add additional information from the custom fields as long as it’s all inside the same value. /getweather Check to make sure that it works, and you should see the weather updated on your Notion page. Integration #2: Send every receipt from Gmail to a Notion Table The integration allows you to send receipts that were labeled in Gmail into Notion, so you can track your spend, attach receipts to your accounting pages, etc. 1. Notion Set up a table, whether inline or full page, with the exact structure of the below table: The naming and property type should be identical for the integration to work. Notice that the Date property is a text property, since using Date has led to a ton of bugs, and the text property is the only reliable way to get the date in the table. Next, copy the table’s URL. 2. Heroku Now that you’ve got the link, follow the Heroku Setup steps from Stage 1, paste the copied URL into the URL variable and continue to Zapier. 3. Zapier Set up a Gmail Zap for New Labeled Email. Pick the label that you’re using to label receipts. Add your Heroku app’s URL and add Fill in the parameters as shown below. /gmailreceipts Test your Zap and if everything went according to the plan, you should see your email in your notion table. Integration #3: Send tweets (content and twitter profile) that mentioned you to a Notion table. I have showcased this use case in my previous post about the Notion integration. Still, I felt that in order for this integration to be valuable, the table should also show the Twitter handle of the sender. Here’s how you’d set this up. 1. Notion Set up a table, whether inline or full page, following the exact structure in the image: It’s crucial that the property names and types would be identical. Next, click the three dots on the left and copy the table’s link and copy the table’s link. 2. Heroku Set up a new Heroku server with the steps mention in the first part of this tutorial, and paste the table link in the URL parameter of the Config Vars input. 3. Zapier Create a Twitter Zap for Search Mentions. Enter your own twitter handle as the “mention”. Add your Heroku app’s URL and add Fill in the parameters as shown below. /twitter Test your Zap and if everything went according to the plan, you should see your email in your notion table. Integration #4: Send Tasks from Todoist/Tasks to Notion The integration allows you to send tasks from pretty much any Todo app that works with Zapier. 1. Notion Set up a Todo table. For this integration to work, . make sure The task property is named “Task” Next, copy the table’s URL 2. Heroku Follow the Heroku Setup steps from Stage 1 and paste the copied URL into the URL variable mentioned. 3. Zapier Create a Zap for your favorite To-do app, that triggers on New Task (or similar). Add your Heroku app’s URL and add Fill in the parameters as shown below. / tasks Check your Notion table, your task's waiting for you there ;) What’s Next? Hopefully, these integrations have sparked your imagination regarding possible use cases for Notion’s API. If you’re interested in helping the project and creating more endpoints or have ideas for interesting use cases, . If you’re interested in reading more about my Notion integrations, join me on Github check out the recent posts here.

4 Notion + Zapier Integrations You Can Implement Today

Cut to the chase: Automation of forex conversion: Saved 20 hours ⏰ Not using multi-currency feature in Xero: Saved $600 💰💰 Automating receipts attachments: 100 hours ⏰⏰⏰⏰⏰ Background Story: I have been running a business in Jakarta, Indonesia for the past 5 years, and have been using Xero as my primary accounting tool. The main currency is Indonesia Rupiah, but I make several purchases through Singapore dollars from time to time as well. To handle this multi-currency, I have to subscribe to Xero’s most expensive package — which costs me $40/month. small preschool I’ll let Steve Carell replay my reaction. Here are my three objectives: Objective 1: Convert 🇸🇬 SGD to 🇮🇩 IDR based on the exchange rate of the day of purchase Objective 2: Lowest price possible (Hey, we’re running a business here) 💸 Objective 3: Attach receipts for every transaction at the quickest possible way 📌 OBJECTIVE 1: CONVERT SGD TO IDR USING THE EXCHANGE RATE OF THE DAY OF PURCHASE Tool used: Python 3 For each transaction, I get the forex-of-the-day from any forex website, multiply that with the SGD to get the corresponding IDR. Assuming I take 1 minute for each row, it will take me 20 minutes for 20 transactions. Time-wasting-soul-numbing way: Quick Math:1 min x 20 transactions x 12 months x 5 years = 1200 minutes (20 hours) I would rather spend the 20 hours watching the entire Harry Potter series, so I pulled up my Python script and started coding, which took me an hour to complete. I am not going to explain my code in too much detail here as it requires certain basic understanding of programming on your end. If you are a geek like me, go to get the full documentation and code. Using Python: here Basically, the flow of the code is simple. Get Forex information from European Central Bank Read the CSV file For every row, get the date to find the currency rate IDR = currency rate * SGD Save it > Import it to Xero (done!) How long does it take? Well, let’s see the following GIF. It took me 20 seconds! That’s 3 times faster than any Nas Daily video! OBJECTIVE 2: LOWEST PRICE POSSIBLE Now that I can convert multiple currencies by myself (I mean Python), I can use the $30/month subscription plan instead. This means I have saved $600 in the past 5 years time and counting. Quick Math: $10 x 12 months x 5 years = $600 (but still cannot buy an iPhone 11) OBJECTIVE 3: ATTACH RECEIPTS FOR EVERY TRANSACTION IN THE QUICKEST WAY POSSIBLE Tool used: Zapier It’s always a good accounting practice to attach receipts for every transaction you’ve made, even if it pisses some people off in the organisation. However, searching for those receipts is still a pain in the ass. FAQs that I have in my mind whenever I search for those receipts: Which email address was the receipt sent to? Was it to email1@gmail.com or email2@gmail.com? What?! I need to login to get my receipt?! Can’t you just attach it to the email? What’s the username and password for this account again? Where the hell should I click to get my receipt? Hold on.. is this receipt for this payment period or the previous one? Both have the same amount. It took me about 5 to 10 minutes to find one single receipt. Let’s do the math again… Quick Math of best case scenario: 5 minutes x 20 transactions x 12 months x 5 years = 100 hours So I used Zapier to do this. is an incredible tool to automate things without Python. One downside: Zapier is a freemium software and it costs $20/month if your automation process requires more than 2 steps (but for the time it saves, I don’t mind 🤷‍♂) Zapier This is how a typical workflow in my Zapier looks like: In plain English, these are the steps: When I receive an email from my gmail Only continue if the email’s subject head is <a_subject_head_that_you_need_to_figure_it_out> Save the screenshot (technically the HTML) of the email and save it to a Google Drive folder. (Yes, saving the HTML is equivalent to saving the entire screenshot of the email view) Locate that image in that Google Drive folder mentioned in step 3 Create a Bill in Xero that attaches the file mentioned in step 4 Move the file to an archive folder in Google Drive (Cleanliness is important ☝🏻) Future Improvements: If you are a programmer yourself, chances are, you would have probably noticed that I could have written a few lines of code that adds the converted currency directly to the CSV; there is no need to copy and paste it from the terminal. You’re absolutely right, I was being lazy at that time. 😅 I’ll see if I can write a Python program to remove the reliance on Zapier. That’ll probably take a bit of work. That’s it. That’s how I saved my money and time — the world’s most scarce resource. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch the Chamber of Secrets.

How I Saved 120 hours And $600 on Xero With Python Automation And Zapier

Learn how Wade and his co-founders took Zapier from part-time side project to 180+ employees and $35 million ARR. Davis Baer : What’s your background, and what are you working on? What motivated you to get started with your company? I’m Wade Foster, CEO and co-founder of . Zapier is a productivity tool that connects over 1,300 of the apps you use every day and automates the tedious, repetitive parts of your job, so you can be more productive at work. Our product caters to individuals, small businesses, or smaller teams within larger organizations. Zapier Bryan, Mike and I co-founded Zapier in 2011, while we were living in Columbia, Missouri. Bryan (Zapier’s CTO) and I were working at Veterans United Home Loans and Mike was still in school when we came up with the idea for Zapier. Bryan and I did some freelance work alongside our day jobs, and we worked on a number of web projects for clients. We noticed a pattern emerging among our clients, and that they were asking us to build more and more integrations from one app to another. We noticed that people were interested in the convenience that SaaS apps offered, but bringing those apps together was a complex and frustrating process that usually required technical help. We wanted to make it easy for people to connect their apps and make their lives easier. We built our initial prototype at Startup Weekend in Columbia and we won. Coming out of Startup Weekend, we applied to YCombinator but were rejected initially. We knew we had a good idea on our hands, so we kept at it. We worked on Zapier on nights and weekends while keeping our day jobs. We bootstrapped the product, one paying customer and one feature at a time. Once we had a more built-out product and paying customers, we submitted again to YC and were accepted into the Spring 2012 class. Not long after, we raised our one and only round of funding, $1.3 million in seed funding from YC and Bessemer Venture Partners. Fast-forward to today: we now help 3 million people automate their workflows and we now offer integrations to 1,300+ apps, including G Suite, Slack, Mailchimp, Asana, and others. We’ve been profitable since 2014 and we last reported that we’re doing $35 million in ARR. What went into building the initial product? We built our MVP in 54 hours at Startup Weekend Columbia. As I shared in , we had several chats with people about Zapier leading into the Startup Weekend and posted in forums to validate that the problem we were trying to solve. We then shifted focus on building our MVP, which ultimately won that weekend. a post I wrote back in 2011 After our Startup Weekend win, we spent nights and weekends trying to refine the product and improve the UI. We often worked until 1 a.m. and then got up to go to our day jobs, but this taught us how to have discipline in how we ran the company. Because we bootstrapped the company, it took a little longer to get the company off the ground because it was just our founding team working on the product and building our integrations. After about six months, we went live with 34 integrations. Not long after, we decided to raise a seed round from YC and Bessemer Venture Partners. The funding was more about building credibility with key partners over needing the capital. The stamp of approval from YC helped us to build integrations and partnerships faster than before. Since Zapier connects and automates workflows, it was essential for us to be connected to as many apps as possible. Example Zap from Zapier’s homepage. What’s your business model, and how have you grown your revenue? When we were just starting out, our earliest users paid a one-time fee to get into our beta. That helped us gather some really high-quality early users who helped us improve what we were offering. In fact, the feedback we received from our earliest customers helped us build a final product that people were willing to pay for. We now offer that are based on task usage. There’s a free plan that is always available for people who want to try out Zapier, set up a few Zaps and see what the service can do. We also have paid plans for professionals and teams that allow them to do even more with Zapier. subscription plans We’ve grown 100% YoY and we last announced $35MM in ARR. We’ve been profitable since 2014, so we are feeling good about the direction that the company’s heading. What are your goals for the future? Our mission is to help everyone be more productive at work. With that in mind, we’re working on making it easier for people to share and collaborate on workflows with friends and colleagues through Zapier. We’re also working on recommendation engines to suggest certain apps and workflows based on what you’re trying to accomplish. Some of the more commonly used Zaps. What are the biggest challenges you’re facing right now? Zapier is growing quickly — we’re now working with over 180 people who are distributed around the world. The big thing that keeps me up at night is how to continue our rapid growth while maintaining a high level of employee satisfaction. What’s been helpful or advantageous in helping you face that challenge? Because we’re remote, we have access to some very talented people based all over the world. It helps us bring diversity and diversity of thought, which is always an advantage to any company. Retaining people is easier when they’re able to work from home. People get to trade in commute time for extra time with their loved ones or simply to get more done. Remote workers are happiest when they feel connected to the business. We kept that in mind when we developed one of our core values, which is “Default to Transparency.” The tradeoff of having a distributed team is that you have to be disciplined at documenting decisions and major changes, so no one gets left behind. When people have accurate, well-documented information in front of them, they can make smart decisions and they can be self-starters. Setting the right goals is important, too. Our team recently adopted OKRs as a goal-setting method. Those goals start with our executive team, outlining the biggest priorities we’re focused on as a company. From there, each team sets and measures the success of their own OKRs. We’ve been trying them out and so far, this methodology helps us all steer towards the metrics and activities that’ll drive us forward. What’s your advice for entrepreneurs who are just starting out? Pay closer attention to the fundamental things that make your company a truly great company: good products, happy customers, and a fun yet hardworking team. Pay less attention to things like office space or where you’re located. You don’t have to be based in the Bay Area (or any large city) to be successful in these areas. Where can we go to learn more? A great place to start is by visiting and testing out the product. We offer a 14-day free trial, and I usually recommend that folks play around with Zapier to see what it can do for you — many people hit these ‘Aha’ moments when they’re playing with it, and they then see how powerful of an addition automation can be to their workday. zapier.com We also have a great blog ( ) where readers can learn about productivity and read our recommendations for the best apps in collaboration, social media management, and tons more. zapier.com/blog Lastly, if Zapier sounds like an interesting place to work, we’d love to talk to you. You can check out our open jobs at . zapier.com/jobs This interview is brought to you by , a tool to schedule and automatically repeat your posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google My Business OneUp

Founder Interviews: Wade Foster of Zapier

What can this post teach me? This post will teach you how to connect to and then automate card creations on Trello. Paperform Zapier Backstory So a while back I discovered this awesome Online Form company from Australia — . Paperform I was curious on understanding how Zapier works together with Paperform and as the best way of learning is to give yourself a project I decided to make one. Although I am retired from the software business I still take the time to hang out with cool freelance tech geniuses that can feed the inner geek in me. A few times a week these freelancers meet and work out of various coffeeshops. The locations are fixed but the weekdays can vary. I thought it would be a good idea to make a an easy app that could help our little band of brothers to quickly communicate where they would be on a weekly basis but not have to login to a calendar or any other service. The app should: ① allow any freelancer, in our group to tell the rest of the team where he/she will be working on any particular weekday ② allow anyone in the group to see where everybody will be on a weekly basis ③ not require users to login anywhere ④ make input super quick and intuitive ⑤ make results intuitive and easy to read Components of the Solution a Trello board to see the weekly schedule of everybody a zap to integrate Paperform with Trello a form hosted by Paperform to get the input Example of the input form I made using the Paperform admin panel Managing Output & Input The Trello board to capture the output. Basically the dashboard that shows where everybody will be Monday to Friday The front-end of the form used to grab the input from users, (allowing freelancers to pick where they’ll go) The Finished App Integrate all components into one HTML page so that users only have to go to one place to see and do everything. Before we begin I really recommend . It is a small business from Australia run by some GREAT people that listen to their customers and make changes quite fast. Their platform also has more logic and functionality than some of the other form builders. . Paperform See this article I wrote a while back on how to make a Ghost contact form using Paperform You will also work with and Zapier Trello Both Zapier and Trello have plans that you can use until your workflow requires more functionality and thus have to upgrade to a paid plan. free This story is brought to you by Hacker Noon’s weekly sponsor, . Create beautiful forms. For Hacker Noon readers, . Paperform 10% off all plans forever The process when working with Zapier is: ① allow access to the service you want Zapier to manipulate ② use Zapier to browse inside the service you want e.g. or Trello and grab the data you want to manipulate ③ tell Zapier what to do with the data you have grabbed Paperform Don’t worry, all these platforms we will be working with are pretty intuitive. Ok, let’s do it! — Here are the steps: Create accounts at , at and at (1) Paperform Zapier Trello You want to start by making a Zap on Zapier (2) A Zap is Zapier language for an integration Next you have to decide what app you want to use to trigger an action. Let’s choose Paperform (3a) A Trigger app is Zapier language for the app that will trigger a later action. In our case it is the submission of a form at Paperform. You have to connect Zapier to your Paperform account. Once you click on ‘Connect a New Account’ you should see a popup box that asks for your paperform login. (3b) If successful, you should see below: (3c) Now it is time to pick the form we want to access in Paperform (4) Ok, we should be done on the Paperform side. Let’s connect Trello to Zapier. This is done in the same way as in step 3b above, when we connected Paperform to Zapier (5) Add the action to use Trello as the next step in Zapier (6) We need to choose a Trello action that we want Zapier to execute for us. Scroll down in the list and pick ‘Find list’ and then continue. (7) An action is Zapier language for something to be executed in an app. In our case it is finding the right Trello board/list, as well as, creating cards Pick the board and the list we want to create cards in. (8) This is when things get interesting because we want to pick a list based on the input from the Paperform. In this case if a user has entered ‘Monday’ in the form, then we want Zapier to go into Trello and pick the ‘Monday’ list to create cards in. This is why we choose ‘What Day Of The Week Will You Go? Answer’ as the ‘List Name’. Next we add another Trello action to our Zapier flow. This time pick ‘Create Card’. (9) Basically we want Zapier to write a new card based on the information from the Paperform that users have filled in. The Name of the card and the Description of the Trello card all comes from fields users have already filled in when they submitted the Paperform. (10) The Gotcha’s — When you are in Zapier, picking fields from the Paperform, make sure to always choose ‘ ‘ fields because they are the ones that hold the data you want. PICK THE RIGHT FIELDS Answer E.g. The two fields below: ‘Pick Your Name — Answer’ and ‘What Day Of The Week Will You Go? Answer. will in this case create the card with the name ‘Andrew @ Taimo Cafe’ because those are the provided by the submitted form. answers — Papeform has a wonderful new function called pre-fill key and it uses a small unique code in the URL. This will sometimes screw up displaying the correct field name in Zapier PRE-FILL KEYS E.g. The field below: ‘What Day Of The Week Will You Go? Answer’ will sometimes show up in Zapier as and that is because if we look at the pre-fill key unique code for that field answer in the Paperform admin, the code is: Ei2sb Ei2sb Don’t worry though, Zapier will always process the field correctly and it knows this particular field is ‘What Day Of The Week Will You Go? Answer’ — In Step 10 above, if you look at the List field, it says ‘ID’ and not the Name of the list. Why is that? ZAPIER FIELD ID’s Let’s look at an extract of that screenshot. It is because Zapier sometimes can’t process the name of a field and absolutely must have the unique ID of the field. This is explained more here: Zapier Field ID’s You just need to be aware of this and sometimes give Zapier the ID of a field instead of the name of a field. Often the reason a Zap doesn’t work is exactly because of this. Conclusion & Additional Information I hope this post shows what is possible with some Zapier and Paperfom magic If you want to see the complete proof-of-concept app, go to take a look. here Below I have added some additional resources. Happy Integrating Everybody! Reference Links: Connecting Paperform to Zapier Tutorial Other Zapier Apps that connect to Paperform What’s pre-filling on Paperform? Zapier Field ID’s This is story is brought to you by Hacker Noon’s weekly sponsor, . Create beautiful forms. For Hacker Noon readers, . Learn more about (spoiler alert — this form is powered by ). Paperform 10% all plans forever becoming Hacker Noon’s Weekly Sponsor Paperform

How I created beautiful web forms: Integrating Paperform and Trello with Zapier

So, you've developed an app or a SaaS and are grappling with the challenge of attracting your initial users. It's a common struggle, and the first 100 users are undeniably the toughest to acquire. I've compiled insights from leading SaaS companies, outlining a set of actionable strategies. The key to gaining early-stage customers often lies in undertaking activities that aren't easily scalable. One prevalent mistake at the outset is an excessive focus on the future. This is a common scenario—I frequently observe founders yearning for virality and rapid scalability, envisioning massive success. However, getting lost in these dreams can divert attention from what truly matters. In reality, a fledgling founder should concentrate on comprehending their customer base. Conducting research doesn't require a large user base; a handful of individuals is sufficient. Obtaining the first few dozen users is more feasible through manual actions—activities that, although not scalable, lay the foundation for sustainable growth. Now, let's delve into some examples of these manual actions. Massive following people on Twitter This strategy proved instrumental in Suhail's efforts to launch Mixpanel, the analytics tool. https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1009454402048937986?embedable=true Remember that you can follow up to 400 persons per day. Start with an email newsletter The concept is to curate a list of individuals who appreciate your content and then leverage this audience as a launching pad for your product. One of my favorite instances of employing this strategy involves Ryan Hoover's experience from a decade ago. He initiated a daily email newsletter featuring intriguing startups he discovered. Over time, he cultivated a list of 170 highly engaged individuals. These recipients not only responded to Ryan but also expressed their enjoyment of his curated digests. This positive interaction sparked the idea to develop a product. Enter the infamous Product Hunt. With the support of this initially small yet enthusiastic audience, the new website swiftly gained momentum, transforming into the premier social network for startup enthusiasts. "The Collinson Installation" Paul Graham writes: "At YC, we use the term Collinson installation for the technique they invented. More diffident founders asked: 'will you try our beta?'. And if the answer is yes, they say 'great! We will send you the link'. But Collinson brothers weren't going to wait. When anyone agreed to try Stripe, we would say 'right then, give me your laptop!'. And set them on the spot." Source: (must read btw) http://paulgraham.com/ds.html Product forums Zapier serves as a tool that seamlessly connects different applications, such as Salesforce with MailChimp or Dropbox with Google Drive. Now, who constitutes Zapier's user base? That's right—the users of these diverse apps. Where do you find these users? Often, on the product forums of platforms like Salesforce, MailChimp, and others. And here's where the strategy unfolds. Zapier's CEO employed a simple yet effective plan. He frequented product forums for companies like Dropbox, Salesforce, and Evernote, scanning for posts like: "I love MailChimp! It would be awesome if you had Wufoo Integration!" Capitalizing on these opportunities, he presented Zapier as a solution. While each link brought in only 10 visits, the traffic was modest. However, the CEO recognized that he was attracting the right customers—50% of these visitors signed up for the beta. A remarkable success rate! The takeaway here is clear: targeted outreach is the key. You don't necessarily need a thousand customers to kickstart your venture; you just need the right 10. Source: https://read.first1000.co/p/zapier Direct sales "Content marketing doesn't work nearly as well for a new product. Direct sales killed it." says Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit. While we all detest spam, there's an acknowledgment that, when executed correctly, it can yield results. The key lies in meticulous research before approaching a potential client, enabling a personalized and compelling offer. Let's compare two scenarios. First scenario:
"Hello, dear sir/madam! Your company has a decent website, but it could be better. Please buy my professional website speedometer tool." Now, consider the second approach:
"Hello, Alex. I learned about your company while watching your latest podcast show with James. You were discussing website performance extensively. Out of curiosity, I tested your website on my speedometer tool, and it only scores 18 out of 100. Want to know what exactly needs improvement?" The difference is evident, isn't it? Nathan Barry introduces another intriguing concept called "concierge migrations": "The biggest objection in the sales process for us has always been. 'But it's so much work to switch!'So we did the ultimate thing that doesn't scale and offered to switch them out of their ConvertKit. Totally for free. Yes. It costs us a lot of time and money, but the referrals and ongoing revenue give an incredible ROI." Great tactic that works for the type of products that are hard to move from. For example, a website builder (my case 🙂). Source: https://nathanbarry.com/2015-review/ Keyword in domain name The next strategy is truly ingenious, and it's surprising that more people aren't utilizing it nowadays. This gem dates back to 2013 when the team at Doordash aimed to validate the demand for quick food delivery. Despite having limited resources for marketing, they came up with a brilliant plan. Their approach was to target individuals in Palo Alto searching for food delivery on Google. Doordash strategically chose the domain name "PaloAltoDelivery.com," anticipating that the domain would secure top positions in Google searches for the keywords "Palo Alto delivery." Essentially, the keyword became the domain name, and it proved to be a highly effective move. Source: https://read.first1000.co/p/case-study-doordash I personally employed a similar strategy with success. My side project, uigenerator.org, has generated over $20,000 in profit since 2022, with the majority of the traffic originating from Google. You can probably guess the keyword. Moreover, just a couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine used the same tactic to garner free traffic from Google. He created a website, allgpts.co, which now ranks at the top for the "all gpts" keyword. So, yes, the "keyword in domain" trick remains a viable and potent strategy. ​ This post was originally an which was then flavored with memes and turned into a . Originally published . 𝕏 thread YouTube video here

The First 100: Proven Tactics From Stripe, Zapier & Convertkit That Get You the Users You Want

প্রথম 100: স্ট্রাইপ, জাপিয়ার এবং কনভার্টকিট থেকে প্রমাণিত কৌশল যা আপনাকে আপনার পছন্দের ব্যবহারকারীদের পাবে

Die ersten 100: Bewährte Taktiken von Stripe, Zapier und Convertkit, die Ihnen die gewünschten Benutzer verschaffen

Los primeros 100: tácticas comprobadas de Stripe, Zapier y Convertkit que le permitirán obtener los usuarios que desea

Les 100 premiers : tactiques éprouvées de Stripe, Zapier et Convertkit qui vous permettent d'obtenir les utilisateurs que vous souhaitez

पहली 100: स्ट्राइप, जैपियर और कन्वर्टकिट की सिद्ध युक्तियाँ जो आपको मनचाहे उपयोगकर्ता दिलाती हैं

最初の 100: 望むユーザーを獲得する Stripe、Zapier、Convertkit の実証済みの戦術

첫 번째 100가지: 원하는 사용자를 확보하는 Stripe, Zapier 및 Convertkit의 입증된 전술

As primeiras 100: táticas comprovadas de Stripe, Zapier e Convertkit que proporcionam os usuários que você deseja

Первые 100: проверенные тактики от Stripe, Zapier и Convertkit, которые принесут вам нужных пользователей

İlk 100: Stripe, Zapier ve Convertkit'ten İstediğiniz Kullanıcılara Ulaşmanızı Sağlayan Kanıtlanmış Taktikler

100 đầu tiên: Các chiến thuật đã được chứng minh từ Stripe, Zapier & Convertkit giúp bạn có được người dùng như mong muốn

前 100 名：来自 Stripe、Zapier 和 Convertkit 的经过验证的策略，可为您带来所需的用户

Creating Your Own Personal Dashboard and Assistant to Get Things Done Like most people I use a variety of tools to manage the tasks between work and life. The issue is that these tools are fragmented and new responsibilities can come from a variety of sources such as email, Slack, or simple conversation. Managing the inputs and how you view these tasks after they’ve been captured is the tiresome part of this equation. Switching between tools, monitoring services for new additions or updates, and manually entering this data across them takes up time that could be better spent clearing your list. I sought something better. I recently heard about on Twitter and friends at work have talked about easy-to-use automation tooling with . Finding the two integrated easily together, I thought I’d give it a try. Airtable Zapier What I built was a personal dashboard and assistant that easily saves hours of my week each week and I believe you can too. In this article I’ll show you how to capture emails, parse them, and add them automatically to a personal dashboard we’ll create just for you. With this you should have the tools to connect all the services you use and create one view of all the responsibilities in your life. Better yet, more time and freedom to accomplish them. Interested in React Native? Check out our and . weekly newsletter blog Getting Started To get started we need to create accounts at both and Airtable Zapier. at its core is a simple database that can display your information in the way that works for you. Some options include Grid, Kanban, and Calendar. Airtable is a product that makes it easy to create connections between a variety of services and automate tasks between them. Want to create a post on Twitter when you post a selfie to Instagram? Services like Zapier and help you fill in the gaps. Zapier IFTTT For this tutorial we will be using Zapier’s email service called that allows you to turn any email into a trigger and template for a Zapier recipe. Parser I encourage you to look at both and , read the Getting Started of their documentation, and experiment with the templates they have available. Having some familiarity with how Airtable collects and presents data will help you customize your dashboard once your tasks are flowing in. Airtable Zapier Parsing Emails Almost every product has notifications that can be delivered by email and we can forward these emails to Zapier’s Parser to capture its output with the template we provide. Head over to and create a new email address. When you’re ready to move on Parser should be waiting for your first email and will look something like this: Parser Waiting for our email to arrive Zapier’s Parser service For the sake of this demo I’ll use a recipe I created to help build my personal dashboard. In my case I wanted to automatically create an Airtable record whenever a new story had been assigned to me in . Pivotal Tracker I triggered this notification and checked the Parser service: The captured email in Zapier’s Parser service Then to prepare the content for our Zapier recipe we highlight the items we care about and name them to create a template for emails of this type: Highlighted items after they’ve been named Once finished with adding names to the items in your email, Save Address and Template. If there are issues with the Parser output add an Extra Template to the email address to make it smarter. Creating our Recipe With our template in place we can use the values in a Zapier recipe to automatically add rows to our table in our Base. We set up a table in our base that can accept the data we’ve picked from our email: Airtable Our initial table with a single line text Name field and a URL field After we’ll head over to Zapier, create a new Zap with Email Parser as the trigger on a New Email, and select the email address with the associated template: Select Email Parser as the option and the select the associated email address When finished run the test to have some test data to work with and move onto the next step, choosing Airtable with Create New Record as the selected option: Add Airtable Create Record as your action step Connect to your base and select the matching email data for the fields in your table: Select the Parse Output for the matching fields in Airtable Then run the test and check your table: Data should be captured in your table! Adding More Data At this point you should be able to see the power of and together, with a good idea of how to create new recipes that fit your workflow to automatically organize your inputs. Zapier Airtable I encourage you to look at as well as you can get a lot out of it and it’s free. You should be able to use almost any existing service to add rows to your table automatically but if you get stuck feel free to ask for help in the comments. IFTTT For this demo I added a few more recipes to IFTTT and Zapier: When a new pull request opens on , create a new record. Github Created a contact in my phone called Reminders with an email address that I can filter on. Creating the contact allows me to leverage Siri to add the task with voice. New personal items and pull requests added to the backlog. Building your Dashboard Looking at our Airtable base we can see that it’s pretty plain. To supercharge our dashboard we need to add some fields that allow us to inspect our data in the view that works best for us. In our case we wanted to be able to attach a deadline to tasks, while giving them a domain and status by which they could be defined. So we created a to define the zones, a deadline field for when they needed to be completed, and a single choice field for the status of the task. Additionally we linked the Zones table to the Todo List. many-to-many table We also updated the recipes to fill these fields accordingly. Note: The Zones table after being linked to records in the Todo List. The Todo List linked column should be set to single selection only. Note: New Deadline calendar and Status single select fields created and assigned to existing stories in our Todo List. With these fields in place the power of Airtable begins to shine. We can group these fields by Zone and Status: Grid View grouped by Zone and Status Create Kanban boards for all zones or filtered by specific zones to gives us a more defined outlook on what we’re currently working on. Kanban View filtered by Work Zone Or a Calendar view to check deadlines. Calendar View on Deadline To get a head start with these views check out the , but if I’ve helped you please still sign up via . 🙏🏻 template I published on Airtable’s Universe this link Wrapping Up What we’ve built is a personal app, assistant, and dashboard that allows us to automate all the inputs and manage them from one place. This has been life changing in my workflows and I know I’m only scratching at the surface. If you make something that has a profound impact on how you work I’d love to hear it! For further examples of some of the recipes I’m currently using, I’m using these to help manage my and : React Native Newsletter React Native Coach Blog Save Liked Tweets and Medium Bookmarks to a table for curation. Automatically update the status of the tasks related to the Blog/Newsletter on my todo list. Capture Ad Inquiries and add them as a record with the ad buyer and contact. Automatically post across Facebook, Twitter, and Medium under certain circumstances. I hope , , and help you as much as they did me. Want to see an IFTTT example, have questions. or comments?, reach out below. ✌🏻 Airtable Zapier IFTTT

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Since 2011

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