Zapier’s AI Transformation Playbook with Phil Lakin (Zapier)
From building NoCodeOps into a thriving community to leading Zapier’s AI transformation, Phil Lakin shares lessons on timing, product bets, and scaling adoption to a 97% AI literacy rate.
TL;DR
In this episode of LaunchPod, we sit down with Phil Lakin, Head of Enterprise Innovation at Zapier, to talk about his journey from building NoCodeOps into a thriving community to leading Zapier’s first solution-based product and their company-wide AI transformation program.
Here’s what we cover:
How Phil turned NoCodeOps into a community of 1,500+ and a SaaS product before its acquisition by Zapier (04:00)
The decision to build Zapier’s first solution product for lead routing (10:00)
Lessons learned from the “one feature away from gold” trap, and why timing often matters more than features (18:00)
How Zapier is driving AI transformation across the org, including hands-on bootcamps (21:00)
Why Phil says you should train AI agents like you’d train an eager intern (30:00)
1. From community to acquisition (04:00)
Phil started NoCodeOps after realizing that while no-code tools were booming, and there wasn’t a home for the ops professionals using them to automate internal workflows.
What began as a newsletter became a 1,500+ member community, a services business, and eventually a SaaS product acquired by Zapier.
“We built this community, we learned their issues and their challenges, and we ended up building an observability tool called Operator. It took lots of hard work, lots of battle scars and lessons learned, but eventually we got really close with Zapier. Wade [Zapier’s CEO] was an early investor, and about a year ago, we were acquired.”
2. Building Zapier’s first solution product (10:00)
Zapier has long been the “Lego blocks” of automation. But building complex workflows like lead routing required deep know-how and endless maintenance. Phil and his team built Zapier’s first vertical solution: a pre-built lead router that works out of the box but still lets users lift the hood and customize with Zapier primitives.
“Zapier is like Lego blocks; really easy to build whatever you want. But the problem with that is, you’ve got to know what’s possible, you’ve got to have the time to build it, and then you’ve got to have the time to maintain it… we wanted to deliver a product experience that gives you the best of both worlds.”
3. Avoiding the “one feature away” trap (18:00)
From NoCodeOps to Zapier, Phil has seen how easy it is to believe you’re “just one feature away from gold.” In reality, product success often depends less on adding features and more on timing, messaging, and market readiness.
“It’s really hard to know sometimes whether you’re one feature away from gold, or when to just cut your losses and start a new tunnel. With Operator [at NoCodeOps], we thought we were one feature away… but the problem just wasn’t popular enough for CIOs and CTOs to care.”
4. Driving AI transformation at Zapier (21:00)
Zapier now boasts a 97% AI literacy rate across employees. Phil built a year-long AI adoption program that includes bootcamps, hackathons, and agentic workflows for enterprise clients.
“We’ve got a very high AI literacy rate at Zapier. The last published one was 89, but we just redid our stats and we’re actually at 97 now. That’s not just ChatGPT usage — that’s orchestration, agent usage, more bots than humans. We even have an AI-first hiring framework.”
5. Training AI like an intern (30:00)
Phil frames AI agents as eager interns: they’re capable, but only with context, structure, and feedback.
Most failures come from under-specifying tasks. Like interns, agents improve dramatically when onboarded properly.
“Imagine you had an intern — Harvard graduate, super smart, knows nothing about your business — and you just gave them a task. How would they perform? Probably poorly. But if you gave them context, examples of what you like and don’t like, and sat with them the first five times, you’d get way better output. That’s how you should think about training agents.”
Chapters
00:00: Intro
01:30: How Phil built the No-Code Ops community and why Zapier acquired it
05:45: Building Lead Router and how it shaped Zapier’s roadmap
10:20: Building with Zapier Primitives
15:10: How Zapier achieved 97% AI literacy
20:25: AI agents and workflow automation
26:40: Tactics for bringing employees on board with new AI tools
32:55: What other companies can learn from Zapier’s AI transformation
Links
What does LogRocket do?
LogRocket’s Galileo AI watches user sessions for you and surfaces the technical and usability issues holding back your web and mobile apps. Understand where your users are struggling by trying it for free at LogRocket.com.