1. The Rise of the Planet of the APIs
One Startups Story of Transition from
APP to API

2. “There’s an app for that”
• Goldrush of 1849
– “The individuals who became the richest were in fact not these early miners but were instead entrepreneurs who created
businesses to support all of the prospectors.” http://americanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa090901a.htm
• 2008 (App store opened July 2008)
– Number: 10K at end of year
– Revenue: $250,000/year
• 2011
– Number: Nearly 1 million (2000 released per day)
– Revenue: $3.5 Billion/year
• Who is getting the lion’s share of that? Apple
(the support structure)
http://www.businessinsider.com/app-revenues-2012-6
http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/05/available-apps-across-major-mobile-platforms-approach-million-app-milestone/

3. A Personal Experience
• Didn’t start with an API
• Built a couple of Apps using our technology
• Realized it would be more effective to sell our
technology (super cool) to lots of apps

4. Rise of the APIs
• Number of public APIs > 6000 up from 1000 in
2008
• APIs are now multi-billion dollar business and
growing
http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/j-musser-apishotnotgluecon2012

5. APIs as a product
http://www.slideshare.net/jmusser/j-musser-apishotnotgluecon2012

6. Benefits of an API model
• Millions of potential paying customers (who
pay more than $1)
• Make money for your core technology
• Less front end development and design

7. Many Paths to Revenue
AdWords

8. Advice
• Technical
• Launch
• Promotion