A wave of API companies

API companies are the new black

Recently, we've seen a wave of new companies being started or funded with APIs as the key functionality that they provide. This is something called an API economy company. Here are a few examples:

• Hasura now lets developers turn any data source into a GraphQL API
• Thepeer, an API-based startup that connects African businesses, raises $2.1M
• API-first startup Vivanta hopes to be Plaid for health

Enabling APIs

GraphQL is a fast-growing query language for APIs. One of the core values that it provides, is to allow for a broader range of functionality or data access via an API. But this also creates a set of potential exposures of data via more flexible queries. We'll be talking about this more as we continue to build out the FireTail platform.

Creating packages

APIs are one of the most flexible ways to package things. Those can be data packages, data sets, offerings, or really anything can be encapsulated in a self-describing object, like a JSON document. That's why a service that shows bundles of banking or insurance offerings makes a lot of sense. The consumer of that data, which might be a retail or B2B service provider, can take that data and present it any format that makes sense to sell, market or serve.

When you can't know the future

If you start with one data feed, with one data element, that's a very simple starting point. However, over time, more and more data may be useful. After all, data is the new oil. That's why an API is the perfect way to start providing this data. You can always update the feed later, and add more data to it.