The Business of APIs – Mashery
November 3rd, 2008
After the first break, Mashery CEO Oren Michels gave a brief overview of the value proposition for published APIs. While APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision.
Mashery
Oren explained that in the traditional business development scenario, the biz dev team pursues a handful of partnerships with top tier partners. These deals require a great deal of work up front, as well as during the integration phase. This approach works well for partnerships with big partners that live at the “head”, rather than in the long tail of smaller players.
With a managed API, the scenario changes. Your company can now go after the “shoulder”, that area between the long tail of small, diffuse partners, and the difficult-to-reach head. While many developers will do nothing with the API, some of the developers who reside in the shoulder will do some very compelling things with the API. As they bump up against the initial limitations of the API, you will develop a closer working relationship with them. By the time they have scaled up to the point where they represent a highly valuable long-term partnership opportunity, a relationship has already been established.
Mashery has already helped customers such as WhitePages.com (dozens of top tier paid content partners), Thumbplay (hundreds of new paid subscribers each month through affiliates that use their API), Compete.com (surpassed Alexa.com’s traffic in six months with the help of managed API), and Calais (5x normal enterprise deal flow since rollout of managed API).
Mashery provides help with the following:
- Getting your API developed
- Managing the learning curve with extensive metrics so you can optimize results
- Helping you stay focused on your core expertise
- Providing stability and reliability
- Evolved growth
Mashery currently provides managed API services to over 60 customers, many of whom are here at the Business of APIs Conference.

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July 5th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
[...] expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery [...]
July 12th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
[...] expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery [...]
July 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
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July 12th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
[...] APIs using Mashery’s expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
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July 19th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
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July 26th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
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August 16th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
[...] expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery [...]
August 17th, 2009 at 1:52 am
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August 26th, 2009 at 10:37 am
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September 13th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
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October 5th, 2009 at 5:26 am
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November 8th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
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November 22nd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
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December 6th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
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January 4th, 2010 at 4:44 am
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January 10th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
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January 11th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
[...] expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery [...]