Building an API Company From the Ground Up

Want to build an API company? I'll show you how! This talk covers the entire process from start to finish, with lots of examples and stories along the way.

Transcript

1. http://rdegges.com Randall Degges CTO Telephony Research @rdegges
4. 1. a command line app for the web (see also: library)
5. print 'Yo' curl http://yo.com
6. Like a web page...
7. ... but easier.
8. Find a problem
9. APIs are for
10. Caller ID (CNAM) 1-(818) 217-9229 Randall Degges
11. Big Companies Monopolize Infrastructure
12. Telco negotiations Data access cost $xxx, xxx requires special hardware and software
14. Old Standards Have been around since early 1900s. 15 character ASCII string. Vary from country to country. Aren't available in US mobile networks. Are complex....
15. CNAM is complex. (925) 333-3333 (925) 222-2222 (925) 111-1111
16. Small Community
17. What Doesn't Suck about CNAM? CNAM sucks!
18. Build a
21. What is A simple API for programmers that want Caller ID -- without the bullshit.
22. How Works:
23. $ curl https://api.opencnam.com/v2/phone/+16502530000
24. $ curl -H "Accept: application/json" \ https://api.opencnam.com/v2/phone/+16502530000 { "created": "2012-10- 12T06:53:05.194858", "updated": "2012-12- 05T19:58:13.770770", "name": "GOOGLE INC", "number": "+16502530000" }
25. Make it Affordable 300% cheaper than telcos
26. Free CNAM queries (60 per hour) No account necessary
27. (funny story)
28. How Open CNAM Really Works
29. Version 1 (beta)
30. Why? &
31. • Django is well supported. • Tastypie did almost all the API work (initially). • PostgreSQL is reliable and simple. • Celery is configurable and fast. • Heroku is awesome. The Good
32. • Django + PostgreSQL are kinda slow. • Tastypie required lots of customization (throttle, API key authentication, serialization). • Celery has a lot of configuration options, and I kept messing them up. The Bad
33. • One big Django application with lots of lines of code. • Tricky to deploy. Poor Architecture
34. It Worked!
35. Get some
36. Goal: Feedback
37. Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com
38. Programming Subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/programming
39. #startups irc://irc.freenode.net/#startups
41. Listen to Your Users
42. Go out of your way to help. tip:
43. Simplify. tip:
44. Keep a clear vision. tip:
46. We <3 SOA
47. Simple code base. SOA Rocks:
48. Clear purpose. SOA Rocks:
49. Well defined APIs. SOA Rocks:
50. Independent scaling. SOA Rocks:
51. Isolated failure. SOA Rocks:
52. • Flask • Amazon DynamoDB • Heroku • PostgreSQL
54. Simple. Flask Rocks:
55. Lightweight. Flask Rocks:
56. Great Libraries. Flask Rocks:
58. Simple JSON data store. DynamoDB Rocks:
59. Hosted by Amazon. DynamoDB Rocks:
60. Fast. Really Fast. DynamoDB Rocks:
61. Like 1ms fast. DynamoDB Rocks:
62. 2500% faster than PostgreSQL. DynamoDB Rocks:
63. Cheap. DynamoDB Rocks:
64. Reliable (data replicated). DynamoDB Rocks:
65. SSD storage. DynamoDB Rocks:
66. "DynamoDB is so fast, you don't need
67. CNAM Lookup (free)
69. Built on top of AWS. Heroku Rocks:
70. Simple. Heroku Rocks:
71. Reliable 99.99% Heroku Rocks:
72. Easy to scale. Heroku Rocks:
73. Lots of addons. Heroku Rocks:
75. • heroku addons: add heroku-postgresql. • fork • follow PostgreSQL Rocks:
77. SSL Everywhere!
78. Which libraries do you use?
79. dynamodb-mapper
80. dynamodb-mapper Queries
81. flask-login
82. flask-login Loader
83. flask-login Decorator
84. How do you do billing?
85. Stripe
86. Bitpay
88. Marketing....
89. YOU DON'T NEED MARKETERS
90. You need to talk to people!
92. Google your industry!
93. Find your customers.
94. Put contact names, company names and URLs into a Google doc.
95. Email 3 potential customers per day, asking for feedback.
96. Listen to feedback.
97. Best Practices
98. Support a single serialization format (JSON). Best Practices
99. Make use of drip email (intercom). Best Practices
101. Best Practices Automate everything.
103. Give it a Go Automate everything.
104. Build Something Awesome
105. http://rdegges.com @rdegges Thank You