Developer experience. If you provide APIs or API-first products, you likely hear that term a lot. After all, you need developers for an API to succeed — and if they don’t have a great experience, they’ll move on.
We’ve all heard the terms API product or API-as-a-product. The terms themselves seemed to be used quite freely, leaving some of us with an assumption of what is meant but without a really solid grasp. As joining and contributing to the API economy becomes more desirable, API products are a crucial part of any business that is looking to tap into it. So asking “what is an API product?” is a really relevant question with many different angles.
The meteoric rise of Product-Led Growth, or PLG, has transformed business within the world of technology. One sector in particular has found incredibly fertile ground, that being, API-driven companies. This is in part because API-driven companies offer an easy-to-adopt platform that is highly customizable. Top product led growth companies Twilio and Stripe are often listed as the luminaries in the API space, because of their disruptive approach and their wildly high valuations.
There’s a common misconception that product-led growth means a business doesn’t focus on sales. That’s not the case. It’s just that product-led growth layers in sales later in the customer journey. This can be a hugely effective approach, particularly when it’s combined with deep data insights to drive that growth. For API-first companies, this product-led approach is a cornerstone of success.
