API API API!!
Programmatically-accessible data source for data on companies in the API Ecosystem
Post #3 will be less verbose compared to the last two. My high school buddy, Raghav, and I are obsessing over the API [and microservices] ecosystem for the past quarter. Empirically and instinctually, our main takeaway is that there are many sub-niches, within the API Ecosystem, in their ‘first-innings’ of innovation cycle [more on this later 🤐]. So, our duo has been working on the 2 tasks below, which will make for the body of this post:
(1) Mapping the API ecosystem 🗺
(2) Sticking an API in front of the database mapped 📡
For the uninitiated, mapping the space gets complicated slowly and then suddenly! We realised APIs and auxiliary tech is omnipresent in the ‘Programmable Web’ and key to a more seamless and efficient digital universe. More research led to more research. However, 3 strategies seem to work to get to our mental-model-prototype → (i) Tabulating, manually, a directory of companies with the useful information such as category, sub-category, stage of each company (ii) Doing tutorials, demos and community-diving for a few stand-out companies (iii) Revisiting the directory for re-classification of company categories; sometimes employing comical analogies to solidify our understanding.
🏗 API Infra - alternatively defined as picks and shovels or tooling of the API ecosystem.
↪️ API Driven Architecture 🛖 - comes loosely as sub-part of 'API Infra'. Companies classified leverage microservices or composability functionality as core feature(s).🥇 API-as-a-Product - classic API first companies can be bifurcated as per industry [ecommerce/banking] or function [communication/payments]
↪️ API Orchestrator ⛓ - companies that leverage/orchestrate/wrap-over/aggregate APIs of other companies into something useful.We believe this mental model/map is NOT wholly technically accurate, but it is good for moot, which is the objective of this post i.e. to better define categories and accurate classification of companies in the map with public discourse.
This is not the first directory out there. Tyler Jewell, Grace Isford, Tracxn, APIDays, GGV’s Index are foundational resources out there. But we reckon this is the first directory (still non-exhaustive) formatted into something easier to consume with software i.e. where we went and stuck an API on the front of the directory, so a few curious people can interact with the data of companies using CRUD [create-read-update-delete] functions! Inspired by punkapi.com
👨🏿🍳 Ingredients for Basic CRUD App Build:
→Basic CRUD using node.js with key dependencies such as <express, jwt, bcrypt, mongoose etc.>
→Postman for testing client
→MongoDB as database host
→Github as a cloud repository and triggered deployment via Webhooks
→Heroku Cloud to host the CRUD app
→Retool for bare- bones front end
Thank you for reading - Please get in touch for further discussion, feedback and questions.