

Ask HN: Is there a market for an API development company? - ten7

Web Dev Shops (and Creative Agencies) are everywhere, but I am yet to see a company that focuses on developing APIs for clients. Sure, it is most often part of the development of a mobile app, but what about smallish companies that want to make their data (whatever it is) available more programmatically. For example, a large restaurant chain might want to make its menu more accessible; or a non-profit foundation may want to make its data more accessible. Thoughts?
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marketer
There probably is a market, but it's a lot smaller than building general
web/mobile applications.

The kind of clients that want to build an API 1) already have a main
product/website and 2) are likely more technical than average. It's probably
something they could do themselves.

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ten7
You're probably right, the market is probably quite small right now. But! I
feel as though that might be changing... and quite honestly, I feel like the
clients may very well be both businesses that are established and want to have
more of an omni-presence, but also the more technical ones.

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padobson
I just got finished building one for a client and I'm getting ready to start
another. So there's always a market if you solve the problem well.

Coincidentally, I'm looking for a python coder to work with on this next one.
If anyone is interested in learning more, send me an email.

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ten7
Curious about how you approached that? Choose the tools based on what the
client is using? Or, use the tools you are an expert in and deploy with those?

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padobson
Both really. The client has a Django project that already had a REST interface
for a handful of AJAX calls, and I have python expertise, so they hired me.

The project is using a Django extension called Piston:
<https://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home>

Which is really quite nice for building REST APIs with Django.

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dexy
Mashery (<http://mashery.com/>) has done this for Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes,
and others. I think they're more about providing useful API access
technologies than actually doing contract work to get things set up though.

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ten7
Thanks for the pointer. From what I can tell, it seems like you'd use Mashery
if you were building an API for yourself, or for someone else? It seems to be
more about the operations of the API that the strategy behind what methods the
API should have. Right?

(From their company page, <http://mashery.com/company>: "We help brands...
manage (their) API Powered Platforms..."

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dexy
I'm not sure how much of each they do, though I'd imagine it's a bit of both,
as obviously they're experienced in taking APIs public so they both have the
tech to support it and the past knowledge of what users/developers want. Check
out <http://developer.rottentomatoes.com/> to have a look (it says Masher Made
at the top)

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bsenftner
If you're just thinking "a shop that develops APIs", that is the same as "a
shop that writes code". You are not offering the client anything tangible they
can identify. Unless you restrict your clients to software houses without the
time or expertise to write their own APIs, the larger non-developer world of
clients has no idea what you are offering.

I write APIs. I specialize in them, but for a specific purpose. I develop 3d
animation technologies and then expose them via an API. I then license use of
that API to 3rd parties, hosting the servers in both cloud and colocation.
That is something tangible they can grasp. This is after spinning my wheels
for a while trying to do what you seem to be thinking.

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ten7
Well, by your definition then, "a shop that develops APIs" is the same as "a
shop that writes code" is the same as "a shop that makes websites" is the same
as "a shop that makes apps". Come on now! Clearly, it would be a shop that
writes code. And at that, a shop that's specialized at being excellent at
figuring out APIs for clients. I don't think this would be geared towards
software houses, or companies with their own dev teams, I think this might be
geared towards aspiring businesses who don't necessarily want to be a dominant
player in the market, but would rather be more accessible to its users.

It strikes me that quite possibly one of the next channels that businesses
might want to exploit are having their data available programmatically. Which
is why I'm wondering whether that's one of the next market opportunities.

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shafqat
There is a decent market.

While its not our core business, we host content APIS for some large
publishers. Because we're ingesting their content anyway (content syndication
is our main business) and we already have a robust API, we've productized it
to provide APIs as a service back to our content providers.

I think content and ecommerce APIs are where you will see the most traction.

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pixelcort
Maybe <https://www.parse.com/> although that's more of an API-as-a-service.

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herval
What value an "API-only company" would offer that a "web dev shop" wouldn't?

Following the same train of thought, why aren't there shops out there that
ONLY do "web forms" (not talking about SaaS here), or webdesign agencies that
only do "landing pages"?

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stevedekorte
I suspect there could be a huge market if Apple allowed frameworks to be sold
on the mac app store on a per seat basis - so framework developers would get
some cut of each sale.

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ofutur
There is at least a market for an API toolkit where you could choose an API
model, security features, the DB to connect to, the language to use and the
data model.

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ten7
Sounds like what Mashery does mentioned in the thread.

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ofutur
I don't think so (based on what I read). They want to manage your APIs and add
functionalities that you're missing, like the extra layers of security. They
don't provide you with a way to build your API to publish your data.

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h4ck3rhn
Another one I came across was mashape.com "A place to easily discover, manage
and hack badass APIs". Few examples: NLTK, sentiment analysis, DuckDuckGo.

