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Zapier: A $5B Unbundling Opportunity

239 点作者 georgesequeira大约 3 年前

36 条评论

cm2012大约 3 年前
Zapier is a god send for the non developer portions of a company.<p>I work in marketing. Marketing projects are inherently speculative, you don&#x27;t know what they will achieve until they&#x27;re done. Add to this that dev teams at every company have full sprints planned for months. Getting a marketing project done through the dev team is months of exertion and sweat.<p>Or... get Zapier approved by security, get platforms plugged in officially, nice and tidy. And then the marketers can do what they need in the platform, and they&#x27;re able to iterate and learn at a much faster pace. It changes the whole game.
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oldandboring大约 3 年前
The article describes an idea that there are startup opportunities to be found by identifying horizontal platforms (e.g. Craigslist) that cover a lot of ground and build something that handles just one use case (e.g. job posts) covered by that platform. The article calls it &quot;unbundling&quot;.<p>A while ago I was involved in a startup that attempted to compete with a dominant horizontal platform in this manner (Craigslist, in fact). The ideas were fine, the people were good, but we had a lot of trouble getting traction. Turns out, Craigslist is where the people are, and if you want to build a marketplace, you need people. Features turn out to be secondary. It&#x27;s unsurprising to me that, in the end, the best competition for Craigslist came from another big horizontal platform with tons of people: Facebook.<p>I&#x27;m not actually trying to say that &quot;unbundling&quot; can&#x27;t ever work. Maybe Zapier is ripe for it, as the author suggests. This is just what happened to come to mind when I read this story.<p>Interesting overall. Thanks for the post OP!
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Lightbody大约 3 年前
Hey -- my startup (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reclaim.ai" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;reclaim.ai</a>) got mentioned here. Super cool!<p>Funny enough: quite a few Zapier employees use us to do calendar automation.<p>IMO, the opportunity is &quot;and&quot; not &quot;or&quot;. Zapier is great (I use it too!) for so many use cases, but sometimes the use case is complex enough and the opportunity large enough that dedicated solutions emerge.<p>So while some value may strip away from Zapier via dedicated solutions like Reclaim, I think Zapier will also continue to add value by educating more of the world, improving their UX, and connecting with more services.<p>For the folks looking for coding-style solutions, I&#x27;m also big fan of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pipedream.com&#x2F;</a>. Check it out!
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alooPotato大约 3 年前
Our customers of [Streak](www.streak.com) use zapier heavily to connect to all their other tools so we have a ton of experience with it. We&#x27;re currently building an alternative for our users natively into our app (we think we can make a more optimized experience for our app).<p>I think we&#x27;ve stumbled onto a pretty key product insight - we&#x27;re basing our automation tool on a spreadsheet. Zapier is clearly optimized for non-technical users so doing any logic, even basic if statements, is really cumbersome. On the other end of the spectrum, pipedream and tools like it rely on your users knowing how to code. We think spreadsheets are the perfect balance, most users (at least ours) know how to do basic formulas and understand references.<p>Spreadsheets are awesome:<p>- development environment is completely set up for you, no tooling needed<p>- editor, runtime, debugger are all the same tool<p>- by default you see the <i>output</i> of all your computation, its a secondary action to see the code<p>- you can preview the intermediate data results at every step of your computation making debugging a dream<p>Here&#x27;s how we&#x27;re thinking of applying it to the Zapier use case:<p>- a series of zapier like triggers and actions<p>- each step is just a 2 column spreadsheet (property name and property value)<p>- the value can be something hardcoded, a reference to a value in a previous step, or a complicated formula<p>Anyone tried something like this before?
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adameasterling大约 3 年前
So I&#x27;m pretty sure this is the technology revolution that we&#x27;re all sleeping on.<p>Like, self-driving cars? VR? Meh.<p>Accessible programming? A safe environment for folks close to a business problem that lets them solve that business problem on their own?! <i>That&#x27;s</i> cool.<p>Like for me, in my experience as a software engineer, there&#x27;s basically four types of employees: The tech-naive domain expert, the tech-friendly domain expert, junior coders, and senior engineers.<p>The two ends of the spectrum should stay focused on they&#x27;re good at: Doing business stuff, or coding on tough problems.<p>It&#x27;s the two roles in the middle that interest me: Tech-friendly domain experts and junior coders.<p>Right now, in most companies, tech-friendly domain experts could <i>totally</i> figure out a tool like Zapier and do things that they&#x27;d normally need an engineer to do. But their company doesn&#x27;t use something like Zapier, so they can&#x27;t. They just have to talk to technical people and make them do it. But there lies long debugging loops and, just, slowness.<p>In some companies though, those that have embraced low-code platforms like Tray or Zapier or the product we made (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.middle.app" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.middle.app</a>), they&#x27;ve enabled their tech-friendly domain experts to do tons of stuff they couldn&#x27;t do before, without bothering people like myself, a more senior coder (I can work on platform things!).<p>ALSO, I&#x27;ve found that junior coders have a special role. We&#x27;ve hired non-programmers and taught them Python JUST so they could code new things in the developer side of our integration platform. It&#x27;s a sandboxed environment with limited risk; they can go crazy coding whatever connectors or other things that those tech-friendly domain experts need. I don&#x27;t have to be involved, outside of a code review every now and then. I know that they can&#x27;t break anything other than the narrow thing they&#x27;re working on.<p>It&#x27;s neat. Neat stuff.
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kfk大约 3 年前
UI based flows for integrations are as bad as UI based flows for ETL. For some reason, we managed to move past UI to code for ETL, but now we are taking the exact same path for integrations. Integrations are complex, you might have complex requirements, polling and pushing needs depending on the applications, fast lookups needs, legacy IT solutions that hold critical data. I don&#x27;t think we are ready to go full UI in this space, I think good orchestration and good microservices are still a better choice.
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alberth大约 3 年前
What do you use Zapier for?<p>I feel like I live in a cave. Over the past 10+ years, I’ve yet to understand what use cases people use for things like IFTTT&#x2F;Zapier&#x2F;etc. I clearly must for alone I’m not understanding.<p>Can someone please help me understand their specific use case. I’m genuinely curious.
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duxup大约 3 年前
&gt;The process of companies building products that strip away use-cases from horizontal platforms is called “unbundling”.<p>Is there a more plain English explanation what this means?<p>I didn&#x27;t understand their explanation, and then they showed Zapier that seems to be a service that relies on automating some tasks based on one or more other service .... that seems to be very &quot;bundled&quot; in my mind now that you&#x27;ve got two or more services heavily reliant on each other...
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artyomavanesov大约 3 年前
Zapier seems exactly like the type of product that is difficult to unbundle because its value is in its integrations. If an integration (e.g. Gmail and Trello) maps to an addressable market, then the more permutations there are, the larger Zapier&#x27;s potential market and value is. If you move away from Zapier to some optimized single-purpose integration then you lose the potential value from access to the other integrations. And because of Zapier&#x27;s enormous library it covers both common and niche use cases.<p>Zapier is different from something like Craigslist because the latter only offers convenience from having different verticals in one place. There is no synergy between them.
ghoomketu大约 3 年前
Zapier is also have trouble keeping up with the demand. Their Youtube integration hasn&#x27;t worked in almost 2 months now and I think it&#x27;s because Google has stopped giving them enough API quota to meet the demand. The thread has been locked since and I don&#x27;t think there is any resolution coming.<p>(1)<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.zapier.com&#x2F;general-questions-3&#x2F;youtube-the-request-cannot-be-completed-because-you-have-exceeded-your-quota-error-13627" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.zapier.com&#x2F;general-questions-3&#x2F;youtube-the...</a>
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yumraj大约 3 年前
It’s interesting that some of these unbundling articles have started popping lately. I believe there was recently a Airbnb unbundling blog.<p>IMHO, if anyone wants to unbundle, FB is a prime target. They’ve grown big and acquired companies , and are distracted with the whole Metacrap, that it is high time someone picks use cases apart to do them better and well.
jcal93大约 3 年前
Zapier is really awesome for the non-tech crowd. I think this space is only going to continue to grow. I decided to build <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atlasconnex.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;atlasconnex.com</a> for developers who need more fine-grained control, but don&#x27;t want to stand up their own infrastructure. The project is recently launched, so the number of connectors is growing rapidly. One my favorite (again, I&#x27;m the developer!) connectors is the &quot;build your own&quot; connector. You define a Python function and declare a period for it to run (once&#x2F;min up to once&#x2F;24hrs) and then you can do basically whatever you need inside that function. So if you need to poll an API endpoint, or pull a file from an SFTP server etc., you can create events based on that data that are then processed through transformers and filters and then delivered to their final destination.
gnutrino大约 3 年前
I’ve had this same thought. The features I get out of Zapier are very useful but lacking some basic functionality that would make it a killer app. Things like branching are missing and rate limits are low. The price is also very high per action which makes it a poor use case for anything that isn’t directly making you money.
quickthrower2大约 3 年前
Is unbundling a good way to come up with business ideas? I am not so sure. Sounds more like human pattern matching playing its part. As in &quot;Oh yeah, that business is a bit like a Craig&#x27;s list section&quot;. Unbundling seems like the analysis of what you did, not the plan of how to do it.
howmayiannoyyou大约 3 年前
Zapier is vulnerable to disruption both ends of the dev&#x2F;integration chain (code&#x2F;no-code), and they have been for some time. Their primary edge (IMHO) is a huge ecosystem of integrations unmatched by their competition. I don&#x27;t see that edge persisting. It won&#x27;t be long before OpenAI-esque UI&#x27;s can generate no&#x2F;low code integrations and as you&#x27;ll see below there is plenty of conventional competition.<p>They&#x27;ve had adequate funds and time to implement bulk actions, interface improvements and ecosystem enhancements that would benefit users, but not much has emerged. I use Zapier and some of the providers below as alternatives:<p>Integromat<p>Pipedream<p>Mulesoft<p>Jitterbit<p>Built.io<p>Workato<p>JBoss<p>Celigo<p>Parabola.io<p>Integrate.io<p>IFTT<p>CloudHQ<p>MixMax<p>Regardless, as a private company they&#x27;re really only beholden to their owners, and they generate enough revenue (and presumably NET profit) that one could imagine ownership perhaps confusing focus for what might (or might not) actually be arrogance.
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rwhitman大约 3 年前
I work for a team that specializes in middleware development - eg the cases where Zapier really falls apart and needs a more thoroughly architected solution. I&#x27;ve spent a lot of time inside this topic.<p>The thing that will disrupt Zapier is the software vendors themselves. Most Zaps will eventually be replaced by native platform-to-platform integrations where the middleware has been designed and sanctioned by the 2 parties. Having a one-size-fits all solution is impractical over the long run. Its a temporary fix for a bigger more substantial problem.<p>This is plumbing. You don&#x27;t use one flimsy universal type of pipe joint for every pipe in your house, otherwise you get leaks. Same thing
TameAntelope大约 3 年前
Reddit is the B2C version of Zapier here. It&#x27;s <i>ripe</i> for unbundling. You&#x27;re safe from Reddit itself because historically they&#x27;ve moved <i>very</i> slowly for some reason (though marginally faster, lately), and you&#x27;re safe from the big players (Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok) because of Reddit&#x27;s reputation for going after a (now) older, &quot;savvy&quot; customer base that is hard to monetize.
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avipars大约 3 年前
Are they in direct or indirect competition with IFTTT and also Microsoft PowerAutomate... How much space is in the industry for these no-code automation tools?
tgtweak大约 3 年前
Zapier has a large moat.<p>I would like to think anything you can bring to the table to compete or add value (maybe flow-based logic rules or inclusion of serverless script-level transforms similar to pipedream) could be cherry picked and added onto zapier with little stress. I&#x27;ll add that it is relatively trivial to wire your own serverless function into zapier to this end. One thing lacking from the article as a niche proper webhook management (ie hookdeck).<p>There are many industry-niche api-interchange products out there... many predating Zapier and remaining the defacto in that industry. Think logistics, ERP and finance systems.<p>As much of a case that can be made for unbundling - I don&#x27;t think such can be said for zapier and the breadth of moat they&#x27;ve created. Zapier integrations on a given SaaS usually don&#x27;t hold a candle to native&#x2F;direct, but they are certainly universal.<p>I&#x27;m very curious to hear a concrete example of a segment&#x2F;industry and how it could be &quot;unbundled&quot;, but unfortunately there is none in the article.<p>SOC&#x2F;PCI compliance? Remember Microsoft Flow (now called Microsoft Power Automate)? Hundreds of connectors and deep integration into azure&#x2F;microsoft platform... all underwritten and stamped by Microsoft&#x27;s level of enterprise.<p>Looking at that ARR growth curve, they&#x27;ve certainly demonstrated the value of wide integration over deep&#x2F;niche integrations.<p>The only argument to be made here for market displacement is that a cheaper alternative would come about offered as a loss leader by big tech, or an open data interchange standard&#x2F;paradigm could come abound and disrupt the necessity of this.
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automationre大约 3 年前
I think unbundling takes place on two levels. First, zapier competitors. (Full disclosure, I am building a workflow comparison website comparing 25 zapier competitors.)<p>But secondly, I start wondering if native integrations won&#x27;t become more important and a bigger threat for zapier over time. Currently the typical customer pays for two SaaS services AND for zapier etc. to connect the two. Over time, native integrations can, self built or with the help of white label solutions from n8n embed, make, Paragon and others, make workflow automation solutions less important.<p>I also wonder if Google sheets, notion databases and airtable will not become hubs for automations. Many problems are solved for a fraction of the cost if all SaaS have native, two way automations&#x2F;syncs to these spreadsheet&#x2F;databases. (Notion bought automate.io, but hasn&#x27;t really interested it. Yet.)
sha_burn大约 3 年前
1. Revenue is only $125m 2. Revenue growth has not plateaued 3. There is user value and multiple value in an all in one offering 4. Distribution will be hard exceptionally hard, going up against a thought leading, financially solvent, Founder led organization with a proven solution. ...Thus, your unbundled solution must be exceptionally better for a few million dollars in aspirational revenue. Otherwise, so distinctly different that it is not really a competitor.
mbesto大约 3 年前
Has the author just not heard of Jitterbit or Mulesoft?<p>Tangential rant - I feel like there is this group of 20-somethings that just assume that because they haven&#x27;t heard of companies like SAP, Oracle, etc. that they just dismiss them as being dumb and boring and then when they analyze a problem space. Yet have no idea how a company like P&amp;G operates at a global scale (hint - they use software like SAP). Jitterbit and Mulesoft essentially sit in that space.<p>P.S. - Pipedream is a super interesting model, but it&#x27;s not an unbundling play.
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dnndev大约 3 年前
This is great news. Just made me realizer we are building the zapier for healthcare. Its a fairly new product, but this puts a label on the beast.
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samstave大约 3 年前
Zapier should do a Google and offer a self-hosted &quot;<i>Zapier Engine</i>&quot; box that one can self host...<p>(Anyone recall the Google Search boxes from ~2007? Are they still avail?<p>We installed some at Lockheed in ~2006 or something... never saw the ROI on that thing...<p>but a zapier host on a closed network, I can see the ongoing value of such...
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asim大约 3 年前
We&#x27;re playing in this space with M3O (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m3o.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m3o.com</a>) but focused very much on making APIs programmable as opposed to completely doing away with the code.
mattwad大约 3 年前
We moved to Discord and most apps only support Slack (looking at you, Datadog and Github!). Zapier has saved us in a couple cases from having to go back to Slack.
1minusp大约 3 年前
How is this different than workflow automation (for non-developers) solutions? Or is the takeaway that any workflow automation is ripe for unbundling?
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catsarebetter大约 3 年前
Judging from the startups that linked their saas in this thread, I&#x27;d say this article has somewhat of a point
galaxyLogic大约 3 年前
Is Zapier like an Enterprise Service Bus but for connecting multiple enterprises?
alimov大约 3 年前
n8n.io offers something similar to Zapier, but probably not as well rounded.
IceHegel大约 3 年前
My sense is that most no code tools will face a far greater challenger from AI programming tools like Copilot than from further unbundling through web interfaces. It&#x27;s just so much easier to set up an automated chain of api glue when you don&#x27;t have to read the docks.
koolhead17大约 3 年前
At scale, like every other tool, using Zapier does not makes sense.
jdrc大约 3 年前
zapier sounds like something that doesn&#x27;t scale, or will be replaced by the platforms themselves. it&#x27;s like a business on 1000 other people&#x27;s platforms.
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consoledev大约 3 年前
Zapier while despise by developers is a very good tool
retrocryptid大约 3 年前
zapier is sort of doomed. it has revenue. there&#x27;s no way it will ever get intarwebs valuations again.
PaulHoule大约 3 年前
Whenever I see people struggling with &quot;integration&quot; I find they&#x27;re always using the word &quot;integration&quot;.