Rujul Zaparde: Why Hiring Inexperienced People is Better | E1144

Rujul Zaparde is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zip, the world’s leading Intake-to-Pay solution, adopted by leading enterprises and startups including Snowflake, Canva, Airtable, Webflow, and others. In 2023, Zip raised $100 million in a Series C round, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Before founding Zip, Rujul was a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator and a product manager at Airbnb.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:47) Background
(02:38) Founding Zip
(05:33) Thriving in Massive Markets with Minimal Competition
(10:05) Product Decision: Balancing Specificity & Versatility
(13:39) Managing Early Customer Demands
(19:32) Rethinking Product-Market Fit: Experience from Zip
(27:24) Speed as an Advantage
(30:04) Fostering Creativity within the Organization
(37:06) First-Time Founders vs. Serial Entrepreneurs
(41:06) Selective Micromanagement
(45:35) Motivating Remote Teams to Return to the Office
(48:06) Hiring Mistakes
(54:57) Quick-Fire Round
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In Today’s Episode with Rujul Zaparde We Discuss:
1. From Airbnb PM to $1.5BN Founder:
How did Rujul’s first company fail? What were his lessons?
What did Rujul learn from his time at Airbnb?
How did Rujul come to co-found Zip? What was the aha moment?
What did Rujul wish he’d known when he started Zip?
2. Standing Out in a Hyper-Competitive Market:
Why did Rujul pick such a competitive market? How did they stand out?
Does Rujul think founders should focus on pain points or platform solutions on day one?
What is Rujul’s advice to founders who are in the discovery process?
Does Rujul agree with Trae Stephens @ Founders Fund that serial entrepreneurs doing B2B enterprise SaaS are wasting their talent?
3. The Biggest Lessons Scaling Zip to $1.5BN Valuation:
Which key moment caused Zip to accelerate?
Why does Rujul think speed is the most important element in startups?
Why does Rujul not believe in design partners?
Why does Rujul believe repeatability is the most important thing when pitching?
Does Rujul think AI will destroy outbound sales?
4. How to Hire & Manage Teams:
What was Rujul’s “rude awakening” building a sales team?
What was Rujul’s biggest hiring mistake? What did he learn from it?
How does Rujul decide where to focus his attention and resources?
Why does Rujul believe younger managers are more creative?
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[@20VC]

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[@PrevailPal]

Thank you for sharing. It may not seem like much, but it gave me a new way to approach the issue. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective. Thank you.

[@WorldofProcurement]

Zip are absolutely crushing the procurement tech space. They've primed themselves to become a future behemoth. Awesome conversation here.

[@anupamasingh1378]

Inexperienced people rather have energy to state others ideas as their own.