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?

[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.

[ten7 → marketer]

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.

[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.

[ten7 → dexy]

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..."

[dexy → ten7]

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)

[mmahemoff → dexy]

There's also http://apigee.com/.

And for high-level guidance, http://redmonk.com/, kind of a Gartner for platforms/developers.

[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.

[toumhi → padobson]

Hey Patrick, I could be interested (longtime python & django coder here). Couldnt locate your email though. Mine is in my profile. Feel free to contact me

[ten7 → padobson]

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?

[padobson → ten7]

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.

[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.

[ten7 → bsenftner]

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.

[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.

[pixelcort]

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

[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"?

[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.

[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.

[ten7 → ofutur]

Sounds like what Mashery does mentioned in the thread.

[ofutur → ten7]

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.

[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.