Competition in the valley and in the developer landscape as a whole is heating up. How is this going to affect us?

1. Developer Competition Is
Heating Up
What that means for us
The Lob Team
www.Lob.com
@Lob

2. More APIs From More
Companies
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3. With the continued huge success and growth of API
companies such as Twilio and Stripe amongst
others...
…we will see many more startups built upon an API
foundation going forward.
www.Lob.com

4. Competition from industry incumbents is on its
way.
“In 5 years, 85% of large companies will have API programs.”
http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/31/enterprise-api-programs/
As the non-API industry giants see market share being eaten
away by disruptive API companies, they will recognize the need
to invest more in developers to build their own APIs to stay
competitive going forward.
www.Lob.com

5. The Amazons and Googles of the world are
watching closely.
Companies such as Amazon will continue to monitor the API
landscape to see what is gaining traction so they can either 1)
Enter the market, making it all the more difficult for new
startups to succeed, or 2) Make strategic acquisitions.
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6. Hackathons Becoming
Mainstream
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7. The term “hackathon” will continue to proliferate
around the world.
Soon every university, high school, and tech
company will be hosting their own white-labeled
hackathons.
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8. Hackathons or code-a-thons were started with the goal of
bringing together motivated and talented minds together to
build awesome and useful things…
…but with bigger sponsors, bigger prizes, and more
headhunting, the hackathon model is shifting from a focus
on innovation to a focus on money, business, and
recruiting.
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9. Nevertheless, hackathons are an important staple of the
developer community. Tech companies and startups should
empower developers with the tools necessary to build and
innovate.
In 2014, we will see at least one startup whale emerge out
of a weekend hack.
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10. 2013 proved to be a huge year for the open-source
community and we fully expect the momentum to
continue going forward.
Github Repositories
Open-source will become even more prevalent in 2014 as
developers band together to work on important projects
related to government, healthcare, privacy, and other
issues that will be spotlighted.
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11. What does this mean for
us?
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12. 1. As API’s become more mainstream
it will be tougher to stay competitive.
We will have to continue to make our products more accessible
and easier to use.
With more and more options emerging at a rapid pace,
companies need to make sure they stay innovative.
www.Lob.com

13. 2. Hackathons are getting more corporate
and its going to get tougher and more
expensive to vie for developer attention.
From a developer perspective, although there will be more
opportunities available, every single event will be that much
more competitive.
It will be difficult to stand out amongst the masses.
www.Lob.com

14. 3. With more code to be open-sourced,
ideas and software will become much
easier to create making proprietary
knowledge more scarce.
While the community in large will benefit, it will be harder to
create novel ideas as the probability of replication increases.
Companies will have to find new ways to differentiate from
each-other in addition to differentiating on the product.
Startups are going to have to focus on customer support and
user experience or else they will be left in the dust.
www.Lob.com

15. Questions or Thoughts?
Tweet @Lob
support@Lob.com
www.lob.com/blog
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