Mashery

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.