GTM 185: Zapier CEO on Getting to 97% Company-Wide AI Adoption
thegtmnewsletter.substack.comZapier CEO Wade Foster shares how a one-week company-wide hackathon across every function—not just engineering—jumped AI usage from under 10% to over 50% overnight, eventually reaching 97%. He introduces a four-tier AI fluency rubric (Unacceptable, Acceptable, Adaptive, Transformative) now required for all new hires. He also reframes AI ROI into two layers: floor raisers (broad daily usage) and ceiling raisers (specific measurable wins like AI resolving 50% of support tickets).
For GTM professionals, this is a direct playbook for accelerating AI adoption across sales and marketing teams—not through mandates, but through structured experimentation. The insight that leaders who aren't personally using AI are the single biggest bottleneck has direct implications for sales managers and revenue leaders. The floor-raiser vs. ceiling-raiser ROI framework gives GTM teams a practical way to justify and measure AI investments to leadership.