And while the company’s unconventional fundraising strategy is what’s typically snagged the headlines, there are plenty of other unorthodox moves when you look under Zapier’s hood. In fact, the company’s independent streak can be traced all the way back to its roots. Bucking the usual startup trend, Zapier’s was started in 2011 in Columbia, Missouri – far from the hotbed of high-growth startups. Early-stage companies have all sorts of challenges, from hiring the early team, finding product-market fit, and finely tuning the go-to-market strategy. Starting one in the Midwest might come with even more of a steep elevation to climb.

You don’t need to raise a boatload of money

One example here? Zapier was remote-first way back in 2012, long before it was en vogue. “It certainly made it a lot easier for us as a young company with very little hiring experience to compete for talent. We realized that we’re not going to try and go toe-to-toe with Google or Facebook or Netflix to hire Bay Area engineers. We’re going to go compete for all of the great talent that doesn’t live in the Bay Area — that gave us a really incredible advantage.”

In our conversation with Foster, he takes us through his approach to building and continuing to scale Zapier, emphasizing the need for questioning conventional wisdom and taking the path that makes the most sense for your company, even if it’s the road less traveled. We pluck out eight key lessons from Foster’s atypical approach, covering everything from his famed fundraising strategy, to building Zapier’s distribution engine before building the product, and what he got right (and wrong) about hiring.

If Foster were to boil down his philosophy on building startups, it would be simply: be a plus-one. “It stands for this idea of every day you show up, just make things one bit better. And that sentiment can easily get lost in the midst of grand strategies or visions,” he says. “But so much of company building is literally just showing up day after day and doing that for a really long period of time and just putting in the work.”