Remember when "There's an app for that" was the hottest phrase in tech?
Well, now it's "There's an API for that."
And it's changing everything about how we build products.
Here's why:
- Focus beats generalization
- API-first companies solve ONE problem really well.
- Stripe? Payments. Twilio? Messaging. Plaid? Bank data.
- They're not distracted by a million other things.
- Their entire team is laser-focused on being the best at that ONE thing.
- Scale creates magic
- These companies serve thousands or millions of customers.
- That means they can justify improvements that seem tiny but add up to an incredible product over time.
- Plaid can integrate with even the smallest banks.
- Why? Because across all their customers, thousands of people use that bank.
- It's like hiring a whole company
- When you use an API, you're not just getting a product.
- You're getting an entire company working for you.
- Imagine copying in some code and getting the Collison brothers to run your finance team.
- That's what using Stripe is like.
- The impact compounds
- Just like hiring decisions, API choices compound over time.
- For better or worse.
- But at full company scale.
- It's a product decision, not a purchasing one
- Traditional SaaS? That's for department heads or execs.
- APIs? That's for product and engineering.
- The people building the product decide what to "hire."
- Usage-based pricing aligns incentives
- Most API companies charge based on usage.
- Your costs scale with your business.
- When you win, they win.
- When you lose, they lose.
- It's invisible to end-users
- Your customers don't see the API.
- They just see a product that works really well.
- All the complexity is hidden behind a few lines of code.
The big question:
Does this make every company more efficient?
Or does it commoditize everything except core value props?
Probably both.
But one thing's for sure:
The way we build products will never be the same.
What do you think? Is the API revolution a net positive or negative for innovation?
Top comments (0)