SC2021 - Keynote: From a passion project to 15M+ users: the Postman story - Ankit Sobti

Learn how the Postman team turned a passion project into a platform for 15M+ users. Ankit Sobti, the co-founder and CTO of Postman, will talk about the early days of Postman. From identifying a pain point in the development community, to engineering a wildly successful product.

How did he find people who believed in his idea and convince them to work with Postman? What did the early team do that had the biggest impact on their success? And if he had to go back and do it all over again, what would he do differently? For anyone with their own passion project, this is the Postman story.

Transcript

1. From a Passion Project to 15M+ users 
 The Postman Story Ankit Sobti Co-Founder & CTO, Postman PRESENTED BY June 24, 2021
2. June 24, 2021 About Me Founder of Postman A Builder Since 2012 Passionate about APIs API
3. Our story is tied to the evolution of APIs and how they have taken center stage in modern software. Wait , Postman the RES T Client?
4. 3.5M+ MAUs USERS 15M+ ORGANIZATIONS 500K+
5. 4M+ COLLECTION S CREATED EVERY MONTH 700M+ REQUEST S SENT EVERY MONTH 40%GE T REQUESTS 54%POS T REQUESTS 100K+ RUN IN POSTMA N BUTTONS EMBEDDED 200K+ PUBLIC AP I DOCS PUBLISHED Scale at Postman. 8M 2019 5M 2017
6. Cloud Providers Microservice s Architecture Serverles s Technologies Saa S Companies Trends.
7. APIs are the building blocks of all modern software.
8. APIs form networks of technical, people , and business relationships. T P B
9. Network Style 1. Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Manager IT Engineering Engineering Engineering Dat a Science Analyst Sales Engineering Engineering Analyst Manager Engineering Engineering Engineering Manager IT Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Engineering Postma n Collection Postma n Collection Postma n Collection Postma n Collection Postma n Collection Postma n Collection
10. Network Style 2. Organization Team Team Team Team
11. Network Style 3. Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Organization Postma n Collection
12. Most teams and companies don’t realize that these networks exist.
13. Bugs Productivit y losses Securit y issues Governanc e issues Broke n work fl ows Downtimes Issues.
14. These are not just technology problems . These are collaboration problems.
15. Postman: 
 API- fi rst Development Platform
16. 30M+ COLLECTIONS CREATED COLLABORATIV E WORKSPACES 600K+ APIs CREATED 280K+ TEAMS COLLABORATIN G ON POSTMAN 300K+ NEWMAN DOWNLOAD S PER MONTH 1.2M+ Craz y Adoption.
17. San Francisco, CA Bengaluru, India Austin, TX Columbus, OH Buffalo, NY Boston, MA Bristol, England Lisboa, Portugal Abuja, Nigeria Honolulu, HI New Brunswick, Canada Auckland, New Zealand Sacramento, CA 5 CONTINENTS 8 COUNTRIES 350+ EMPLOYEES Postman has grow n as a company.
18. Where did this all begin?
19. June 24, 2021 First job • Developer at Yahoo in 200 9 • Front-end applicatio n • Where is the API again ? • Wasted a lot of time API
20. curl?
21. Be lazy and build side projects
23. Community
24. 0 to 500,000+ users
25. everywhere!
26. (Not a real company yet)
27. Figure out how to survive
28. Does 
 Developer Love === 
 Money?
29. 500 500 Does 
 Developer Love === 
 Money?
30. Jetpacks for Postman
31. People wanted to buy Jetpacks in a bunch
32. What is actually happening here? 1. Why do teams want multiple licenses when the license is sold individually ? 2. Is the entire team buying or just part of them ? 3. Is it the development team or just the testing team ? 4. What are they exactly doing ? 5. What is their workflow?
33. Postman Team Library Question s 1. Are people willing to pay for another service ? 2. Do people want to even consider paying ? 3. What do customers say they want to pay ? 4. What will happen if they don’t pay ? 5. How high can they go ? 6. What are the other pieces of software they are paying for ? Test and Iterat e 1. Invitation for the beta with an eventual ask for payment (this is not a free product ) 2. Signup page with varying price points (Max - $30/user/month) - $10/user/month was acceptable to a lot of users
34. June 24, 2021 Started in 2014 • Started as a company in October 201 4 • #20 fastest growing SaaS companies in the worl d • #1 API Infrastructure Compan y • #1 Utility Tool in the world
35. June 24, 2021
36. B2D Companies • Business-to-Developer Companie s • Usually start as a small development project, sometimes open-sourc e • Built to service own need s • Gain momentum and begin to grow, similar to pure consumer companie s • Initial traction through word-of-mouth marketing, forums, conference s • Momentum becomes massive and the company catapults into revenue without much commercial effort . • Examples: Github, Twilio, Stripe
37. 1. Growth - Need • Product built to satiate own nee d • By developers for developer s • Discovered by passionate like-minded developer s • Grew organically through Word of Mout h • Built, at the beginning, without a Business Model in mind
38. 2. Growth - Product • Simplicity is a featur e • Even/Especially when you impact increasingly complex use case s • Great UX for a Developer Too l • Jobs to be Don e • Who are you solving this problem for ? • Why are they facing this problem ? • Make better users, not better products
39. June 24, 2021 3. Growth - Virality • Virality built into the product through Postman Collection s • Natural progression for the produc t • Open sourced the Postman Collection forma t • Now, the most popular API documentation format in the worl d • 75M+ collections on the Postman Cloud
40. 4. Growth - Advocacy 1. Advocacy by Individuals
41. 4. Growth - Advocacy 2. Advocacy by In fl uencers
42. 4. Growth - Advocacy 3. Advocacy through af fi liation
43. 4. Growth - Advocacy 1. Critics to Admirers to Advocates - special love reserved for the m 2. Staunch Advocates within organizations - Box, Microsoft, eBa y 3. Bottom up approac h 4. Signi fi cantly easier to market to CXOs and VP s 5. End-consumers already convinced
44. 5. Growt h Suppor t transitioning to Success 1. Focus on excellent customer support since day 1 2. 0.5 developers or 3 founders or a team of 100 + 3. Good support has fostered loyalty and induced conversion s 4. Our users have been our greatest source of ideas - Github/Twitter/Emai l 5. Customer Success - once they’re consumers, how do you help them succeed - at their job, not only at using your product.
45. VERSIONS O F POSTMAN RELEASED 24 OPEN BUGS FIXE D ON THE PLATFORM 980 FEATUR E REQUESTS CLOSED 450 HIGHEST RATED DEVELOPER TOOL HIGHEST RATED IN API MANAGEMENT 6. Growth - Continuous Impact
46. Thank you!