15 things I learned from 15 years in APIs:
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Treat APIs as Products.
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Do design-first, not code-first.
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You need the skills of API & Platform Product Managers and Architects.
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Devs<>Architects<>PMs, lines are blurring. There will be a lot of overlap.
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You must do customer discovery for APIs, do not “build it and they will come”.
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Stay close to customers - the whole team should participate in support and sales calls.
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API delivery should be disciplined and have standards, specs, tools, and metrics. You should run automated tests in every step of the API Lifecycle.
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Drive everything through artifacts such as schemas, and API Description docs. Check them into version control and reuse them for DRYness and accuracy in configurations.
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Work as one delivery team, with Architects, PMs, Engineers, QA, Tech Writers, and even Sales & Marketing - have common goals for all.
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Use AI to help you with design, consistency, Codegen, tests, and speeding things up in general - AI will touch every aspect of your work, and OpenAPI is best generated from LLMs.
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Good UX/DX is worth the cost and effort, for humans as well as Agents. It can be your differentiator.
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Speaking of onboarding, have distinct, clear landing pages per use case. Measure and learn from them.
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PLG is a great fit for APIs - in fact, it’s the OG use case and the only way to sell.
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AI Agents are the future of API consumption - prepare for it.
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Transition to outcome-based pricing, not per-seat.
Which one is your favorite? What have you learned? What would you add? ⬇️