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What you need to know before building an API for your product

First of all, this is a non-technical approach to API’s, so if you want in-depth tech insights, I recommend you get in touch with Hitch — the API experts.

However, if you’re looking to get insight in why you should use API’s to strengthen and grow your business, and what metrics you should be aware of when taking advantage of an application programming interface (API), you’ve come to the right place.

A whole or core product?

To really understand how your company can utilize API’s we need to understand the concept of the core product and what many call the whole product.

Famous marketer Regis Mckenna that helped launch the first microprocessor for Intel and the first computer for Apple said it like this:

(…) A whole product is a generic product augmented by everything that is needed for the customer to have a compelling reason to buy.

So for example a computer is a core product, and the mouse, the software, the screen and any other necessity being part of the whole product.

It’s very important to understand these definitions, because having insight here will help you know how to approach your customers, potential partners and competitors.

Hacking partnership agreements

As your startup grow, you’ll probably be looking to form partnership agreements with other complementary products and companies.

This can be super valuable, but often takes a lot of time and effort, in other words, it’s often very expensive.

So to hack this time-demanding and expensive process of partnering up with other companies, and API can provide this kind of partnership without all the hassle, often at a fraction of the cost.

Bruno Pedro is the CTO of Barcelona-based API startup Hitch. He explain that many underestimates the cost connected with taking use of an API, especially the cost of support.

The thing with building or using an API is that it doesn’t matter if you consider yourself as a part of a whole or a core product. If you’re able to see through your customers (or potential customers) eyes, you’ll probably discover how your product can transmit value both as an integration into a bigger product, or as an integration to enrich smaller products.

The cost of integration

Integrating your product with other businesses through an API offers many possibilities, but also new costs related to integration.

Development costs start out high, but turns to zero as the product finishes. The maintenance costs remains low but stable with a few peaks around new releases with bugs attached. The big cost related to support which will be higher as your API becomes more popular.

Development costs: very high at first, but becomes zero when the API is launched.

Maintenance costs: high after the launch because of bugs, and for every iteration you do you’ll have peaks with your maintenance costs, as well as routinely maintaining the API itself.

Support costs: This will depend on how well your API is performing, but the more users you have, the bigger the support cost will be, so this is the really expensive one.

And remember, these costs need comes with each separate integration.

So, is your API worth the effort?

In other words, we need to understand the life time value (LTV) of our integration.

First you need to measure where your customers come from, then you need to identify the new customers that are using one of your integrations within a specific timeframe and estimate the lifetime value (LTV) of those customers.

Then, when you know the LTV of each particular integration, you can easily know which is giving you growth, and which that are only causing costs to rise.

The last thing you need to figure out to see if your integration is worth doing is the payback period (PBP), i.e if your integration or your API is earning you more money than what you’re spending on it.

To find this number you have to take all of your costs (as mentioned above) and divide it by your monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and again, you have to do this for each integration.

https://upscri.be/285782-2

Getting to the good stuff — growth!

Your product can be the core product which is the big one in the middle, or part of the whole product which is one of the smaller ones on the side. No matter where you are in the ecosystem, you’ll have costs related to the integration.

To be clear, with growth we don’t mean a profitable company, but a business that is multiplying their growth month over month, or year over year. It can even be unprofitable.

So what is growth for an integration?

  • In most companies it’s considered growth if the lifetime value of the integration is three times higher than the cost of integration. If not you’re loosing money. Some experts say that 4 times higher LTV than costs is the number to aim at.
  • And not enough with with a high LTV, it also considered necessary to have a payback period of less than 12 months. If not, you’re also loosing money.

So remember, if you think about how your company is used in a broader context, and not only how its used as intended, there may be many possibilities with using API’s.

This post was written by media manager itnig, Sindre Hopland based on the presentation of Hitch CTO Bruno Pedro.

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Improve your communication with humor

In case you wonder, this is a hypnotoad.

Humor is a universal language, it has no limits, no boundaries. It is the channel to communicate with your customers and collaborators in a direct way and the most efficient transport for your ideas to go around the world.

In the ever-growing ocean of ​​content that is shared every day in social networks, those that add irony, sarcasm or sympathy or usually the ones being shared the most. All colors and tones of humor are welcome on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, blogs and newsletters.

So, if you want to know how you can use the right sense of humor to spread your brand in all the corners of the world wide web, here are some clues:

Connect with your audience. Write, edit, program or design in a way that you talk to your customers in a natural way, inteligent people with whom you would go for a beer with. You will understand their needs, this process is called empathy.

Be funny without making a face. This is important, a good sense of humor does not consist of easy jokes. You could be sympathetic the same time smart and professional. The tone should fit with your company’s values.

Original content. This is the key to everything and to have more value adds some customization and adapt your messages to each format. Creating content is easy, being original not so much, start enjoying your own products and services. Enjoy doing your job. Feel it and try it. Write down your sensations and you will have perfect script.

The spark. This point is as easy as it is difficult. There is no manual to know for sure what’s funny, the best way to know may be to use the scientific method. Make a hypothesis, try it, and then take a distance and decide: Does it make you smile? Then it’s working.

Choose your channel. The continent is as important as the content, it simply chooses the networks and channels, it does not have to be omnipresent. Always think about who you want to read your content and who your target audience is and that will give you the answer.


This post was written & illustrated by creative copywriter at Camaloon, Dolors Boatella — you’ll find her jokes here.

https://upscri.be/285782-2

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Demystifying the product manager, and how to become one

As product focus is more important than ever in building startups in a very competitive market, the product manager role is increasingly getting more common and is highly valued.

But to many it’s a job description that’s a bit vague, and often means different things from company to company.

We invited three product people from the startup ecosystem in Barcelona to discuss the topic: Former PM at Google and currently product consultant Itamar Gilad, CEO and co-founder of Factorial Jordi Romero, and CEO and co-founder of Quipu Roger Dobaño.

Long time product expert Gilad says it’s hard to explain the PM role in one sentence:

The position has changed so much over time, and it’s still changing. I like to define the PM as the person who’s the expert on the users, the customers, the market and the competition, and manages to deliver this context to the product team in a good way — it’s a super man basically!

From product to customer first

From the left: Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig, Jordi Romero, CEO and co- founder of Factorial.

The last 10–20 years, tech companies have shifted their focus from trusting their engineers more than market, to lifting the customer and the users as the number one priority in making the product, says Gilad that for the last six years has managed products such as Gmail and Youtube:

The first time I heard the term product manager was back in the 90’s, and back then it was very new. The thought was that engineers always knew best, but that has changed a lot.

Also Romero, CEO of Factorial, recognizes the attitude from earlier times when he worked in other SaaS companies in the US and in Barcelona:

I remember we first defined ourselves as a product-first company, then a sales-driven startup and later a customer focused company. It think these terms are hard for startups that alter and change the way they do business often.

Dobaño is both CEO and head of product at accounting SaaS Quipu, he defined the product role like this:

You’re the CEO of the product, but it’s not just about making a great product, it’s about continuously solving problems for the customers and making an impact in your customers life.

All the responsibility, but no authority

The product manager is found somewhere between tech, business and the UX/UI team of the startup. © 2011 Martin Eriksson.

Even though the PM has the word manager in the title, all three guests agrees that the only thing the PM actually manage is the product itself.

Romero points to several challenges connected with this kind of responsibility:

An issue I’ve seen in many product teams, is that the PM is managing the team itself, and not only the product and process. I think this is a real problem that is hindering the communication in the organization.

Itamar explains that the PM is there to fill all the holes of work that aren’t being worked on, which means that the person needs to be diverse:

The PM is working closely with both customer service, the business side, designers and engineering, it’s more about creating a pattern for collaborations and a good flow of progress. It’s needless to say that soft skills are in high demand.

He continues to say that a startup needs a designated PM when the startup is at a scale where the business people and the engineering team start arguing what to build next, and you don’t have time as a CEO to deal with all the discussions.

How to become one

From the left: Itamar Gilad and Roger Dobaño.

Romero says he believes a lot in promoting PM’s within the company that share the original values and vision of the founders.

Itamar explains that it’s not necessary to know how to code, but many big companies require it:

In companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google they alway prefer someone with a coding background. However, the personal also needs to be interested in the business side of the startup and have strong soft skills for team management.

Dobaño thinks many companies are setting too high requirements for their PM’s:

What you’re describing here is a unicorn. I do agree that PM’s should have a computer science background, but my job is to empower one person within each product team, and I’ll then make sure the communication flow is good between the company.

Romero repeats how vital soft skills are to this profession:

To have all the technical skills is one thing, but to be able to both do a sales pitch and to convince the developer team that what they’re building is the right thing to focus on, that’s tricky.

This post was written by Sindre Hopland, media manager at itnig and produced together with Masumi Mutsuda.

https://upscri.be/285782-2

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Breaking VIM’s unbreakable «learning wall»

First of all, let’s make things clear. VIM does not stand for Very Intuitive Magic. It’s not easy to learn and it’s like going to the gym. You have to be consistent and use it daily to see the results and keep in shape once you are fit.

But why is it so confusing for most of the people? It is a modal editor, and every mode has its own key bindings. By default VIM opens in «normal mode», which won’t allow you to type. You have to get into «insert mode» pressing the «i» key to be able to insert text, but you could also place the cursor on a character and press «r» to replace it with whatever you typed next, or you could press «o» to create a new line and enter «insert mode» at the same time, etc. You have to remember what every key does in every mode, and you’ll only achieve this with practice. That’s what makes VIM different.

Why bother?

So why would anyone try to break the learning wall and master VIM? Some will say it’s just to prettend you are cool, but they couldn’t be more wrong. There are some features that make the VIM user objectively faster than any other editor user.

No mouse

The first one is the fact that you don’t have to use the mouse for anything. Think about how many times you use the mouse to move around a document in any other editor and sum all those precious miliseconds. It’s a lot at the end of the year.

Changing an “IF” condition and adding an “IF” in 10 seconds

Hands always in standard position

It’s not only that you don’t use the mouse, but you actually don’t have to move your hands out of the standard position, meaning that you don’t need to use arrow keys, or other keys outside the normal reach.

Preinstalled

It comes preinstalled in almost every decent operative system, so you don’t have to go through the hassle of downloading it every time you change your computer or want to edit something somewhere else.

Runs in Console/Terminal

It runs GUIless, in a Terminal or Console, so if you are working on a development project running servers, scripts and commands, you don’t have to switch context. You can feel at home even when editing files in remote servers. This means you can even access and use VIM from a smartphone with an SSH app.

Editing the itnig website in a Mac, with and iPad, through SSH

Lightweight and fast

It’s lightweight and fast, super responsive and never crashes. It takes 60ms for it to open a file containing the 131843 lines of the Holly Bible.

100% Customizable

If there is something you don’t like just change it. The .vimrc config file lets you customize the behaviour of your editor and confortably replicate your settings between setups. If there is something missing, just install it as a plugin.

Macros and scripts

You can actually record your commands to automatise repetitive tasks. Imagine you have a data file you want to make JSON compliant. By recording what you want just once, you can replicate it as many times as you need.

Making a data set JSON compliant by recording and playing a macro

And if that’s not enough for you, you can write scripts using VIM Script and customize your VIM even more.

How fast can you type all IP’s in a local network in your editor?

With just a few lines you can for example create your custom syntax highlighting toggle, and use a shortcut to activate it.

VIM syntax toggling script https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-vim-script-1/

Breaking the wall

The best way for learning VIM is using it for everything. From writing documetation to typing code in every project you have. Start with the basic commands: i, :wq, dd, p, hjkl.

YBlog – Learn Vim Progressively
But before we start, just a warning. Learning vim will be painful at first. It will take time. It will be a lot like…yannesposito.com

You can try this awesome Zelda-like game to learn how to use VIM.

VIM Adventures – Learn VIM while playing a game
VIM Adventures is an online game based on VIM’s keyboard shortcuts. It’s the “Zelda meets text editing” game. So come…vim-adventures.com

Keep using it, because you’ll never feel you know it enough.

I hope this gave you the essentials to start exploring the eternal possibilities of VIM. Feel free to comment below if you have experience using it yourself, the more tips the better. When you master VIM, I can guarantee that you’ll never use any other editor again. Enjoy!

 

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What app to build in 2017? Native, Hybrid or Progressive Web Apps?

The global apps debate got another dimension as Google proposed progressive web apps as the next big thing in 2015.

However, most people building apps today still prefer native apps, for several reasons, mostly because it’s what people actually use.

We gathered three experienced developers and CTO’s to discuss the three types of apps most developers are building today. jordimirobruix, former CTO of Wuaki.tv, senior developer at Ulabox, Rubén Sospedra and founder of Javascript coder bootcamp Codeworks Alessandro Zanardi.

Friction, friction friction

A big question in the app-building discussion, is about the app install friction. In other words how many clicks there are from finding the app in the app store – to becoming an active user.

After voting on what type of app most people with build something with tomorrow, more than 40 percent of the people attending the debate chose native.

Briux believes the friction is the same in both PWA’s and native apps:

What’s the difference of the friction generated by the app store, compared with downloading a web app to your home screen?

Zanardi believes progressive web apps is much more frictionless because the device itself promotes the use of PWA’s:

There is much less friction in installing a progressive web app because the device your using is actually wanting you to install it. Compared to going to the app store, installing an app that takes up tons of space, and needs an update every two weeks.

Sospedra turns to the metrics:

The numbers tell us a story when 86 percent of the media being consumed on mobile phones are through native apps and only 10 percent of the total time spent on smartphones are used in browsers. PWA’s are still the new kid on the block, so maybe in five years we can talk again?

https://upscri.be/285782-2

The evil app store?

In one of the last question rounds, the app defenders had to reveal their answer about app stores — good or evil?

Miro says that if you get rejected it’s an evil thing and continues:

Android is pretty easy, just push and you’re in. With iOS however, to wait for someone from the other side of the world to test your app, that’s a black box for developers and nobody likes black boxes.

Codeworks CEO Zanardi points to that the app store or Apple, is the biggest preventer for making PWA’s really big:

The biggest problem PWA’s have at the moment is that Apple’s Safari doesn’t support service workers and that kills a lot of the purpose of the app. Firefox and Chrome are embracing PWA’s. As long as Apple is making tons of money from the app store we’ll have a real challenge.

What does your startup need?

Former Wuaki CTO Miro says choice of app to build all boils down to what kind of business you’re building:

If you asked me four months ago, hybrid apps were not the way because we couldn’t build what the business needed in Wuaki. But today for what I’m building, we’re looking for speed, something that’s tested and reliable and we wanted access to Canvas or WebGL, so hybrid is the way for us today.

Miro explains how the business decisions often dictates what kind of apps you end up building.

Sospedra agrees with Miro, saying that your business goals need to be clear before deciding what kind of app you’re building. He’s also adding that what kind of technology your team is comfortable with is important as well:

If you have a team that are really good at Javascript, then go for React native, but that’s my opinion.

As progressive web apps might be the bet for the future, Zanardi wanted to end the discussion with a statement:

I completely agree with these guys that if you’re building an app today to work on iOS and Android I would go native. The main problem you would have with PWA’s is with the iOS. If you’re targeting mostly Android devices you might go for a PWA. As long as Apple is blocking the spreading of PWA’s we’ll have an issue we need to solve.

There was a lot of other interesting points in the full debate, so check out the video at the top!

The post and video was produced by the itnig media team Masumi Mutsuda and Sindre Hopland.