⚙️ Issue #111: Transforming API Development
Speakeasy's Sagar Batchu and Simon Yu discuss the pivotal role of APIs in modern software development and the challenges associated with building, integrating, and maintaining them.
💬 Welcome to issue #111 of Between the Lines
Good morning & happy Thursday. If you’ve ever tinkered around with APIs, you’d know that even the most seasoned developers experience significant challenges when using APIs for many categories.
This week, Speakeasy's Sagar Batchu and Simon Yu discuss the challenges associated with building, integrating, and maintaining APIs and how Speakeasy is simplifying the API development process with their SDK-first approach. It’s a Claremont world out there. 👇
~ Josh, Miles, Pat
👤 Community Spotlight: Sagar Batchu & Speakeasy
Author:
Sagar Batchu (HMC’15) started his career as a software engineer for IoT proptech startup Enlighted, where fellow Claremont alum Joe Costello was the CEO. After Siemens acquired Enlighted, Sagar left to join LiveRamp’s new London office and grew into a Director of Engineering role, helping build and scale the company’s London engineering team. Now, Sagar is the CEO and co-founder of Speakeasy — a developer-first API DevEx platform that enables developers to offer best-in-class self-service experiences for API consumers. They emerged from stealth last year with their $11M total fundraising led by Google Ventures and Quiet Capital, along with investments from StoryHouse Ventures, Flex Capital, and Firestreak Ventures.
Co-founders Sagar and Simon recently joined Peter Schroeder from The API Economy to discuss how Speakeasy is changing API development as we know it by enabling teams of any size to build Stripe-quality APIs without a Stripe-sized team.
Speakeasy | The Internet of SDKs
The Prism of APIs
An API is like a ray of sunlight, containing a spectrum of capabilities. Just as white light conceals a rainbow, a typical API hides its full potential. The power within most APIs is typically hard to harness because they are often hard to build, integrate with, and maintain. But in the right hands and with the right tool, an API can enable magical experiences far beyond the mundane.
Speakeasy is the prism that reveals the true possibilities within an API experience. The team at Speakeasy is building a complete platform to create world-class API developer experiences, from SDKs to Terraform providers, developer documentation, API maintenance, and more.
Tools to create SDKs are important because SDKs make the integration story easier. End-users are much more likely to adopt an API that has great SDKs. Simply put, better SDKs = better APIs.
According to Postman’s State of The API Report, over 75% of respondents somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that developers at API-first companies are more productive, create better software, and integrate faster with partners.
While APIs fuel innovation, working with them introduces significant integration challenges. There is the tedious work of managing data schemas, request authentication, business logic, rate limits, and other API capabilities so they align across systems.
Over the years, developers have had a conflicted relationship with APIs. On one hand, they've been crucial building blocks that allow applications to integrate with useful services and data. A great deal of effort is spent on this API plumbing before developers can even begin building creative solutions on top of them. As a result, API users struggle to exploit the value that APIs fully provide.
Today, over 90% of developers (there are nearly 29 million developers in the world, according to Statista) work with APIs in some form, composing solutions by connecting APIs across the web…..
The Secrets Behind Speakeasy
When Sagar and Simon met, they quickly bonded over war stories from the trenches of API development. Both had battled the dysfunction firsthand — the scraped-together integrations, puzzling documentation, and brittle endpoints that broke without warning. Having fought to build and support APIs at their previous companies, they knew the heartache intimately.
They knew APIs represented the medium to accelerate innovation for businesses. But instead of seamlessly connecting systems, most acted as barriers that slowed progress to a crawl. The typical integration project stretches on for months while adoption languishes due to poor developer experience.
Then, after you build an API, you have to consider that, on average, it takes even more time to manage the API you’ve built and needs to be constantly tested to ensure functionality & security. This is true for both internal and external APIs.
With backing from Google Ventures and other top firms, Speakeasy is making it exponentially more accessible for companies to create, maintain, and extend APIs.
Speakeasy's original vision was to focus on API visibility — helping teams better document and test APIs for external developers. But in talking to API producers, Simon & Sagar quickly realized visibility was only half the battle. The real pain point was that integrations were still too hard. API producers were spending more effort writing never-ending reference and usage guides, but user adoption was still sluggish, while implementation costs to support new users stayed high. Every new API consumer built their integration from scratch, reinventing the wheel each time.
They saw that the better path was to simplify the entire API lifecycle. Instead of forcing developers to integrate with raw APIs, what if they could instantly access client SDKs in every major language? These SDKs offer standardized, battle-tested interfaces that eliminate the need for hand-built integrations. Developers could immediately build on APIs with no friction.
Sagar and Simon pivoted Speakeasy to help every team build better APIs from the ground up, starting with dramatically changing how API users consume APIs. By instantly enabling teams to generate SDKs alongside API docs and shifting the paradigm to SDK-first API consumption, they have solved core pain points for API producers and consumers. As a result, adoption has skyrocketed.
Real-world stories of companies leveraging Speakeasy to improve their API strategy dramatically come less than two years after Sagar and Simon founded the company in April 2022. With just a small distributed team spanning the US and UK, they have been laser-focused on the developer experience around APIs.
An SDK-first approach catalyzes a vitally important flywheel: Speakeasy has made it easier for teams to keep API specs rigorously updated. Once developers saw immediate SDK updates from any spec changes, they were motivated to maintain specs as the source of truth. Better specs also meant better SDKs and docs. This flywheel resulted in more reliable integrations across internal and external consumers. Bugs from outdated specs were also reduced, improving overall code quality.
The pivot was a breakthrough. Sagar and Simon realized the best way to transform API adoption was to simplify consumption radically. While visibility helped, seamless integration was the real driver of velocity. Speakeasy unlocked this with generated SDKs, creating the perfect gateway for developers to build on APIs. The approach was a win-win. Easier consumption meant more adoption, while rigor around specs improved reliability and cohesion. Together, they helped Speakeasy customers build better and reduce friction in the API lifecycle…..
Check out the full article from
to learn how Speakeasy is revolutionizing the API development landscape. 👇📣 Claremont Introductions: Asher Weiss & Tixologi
Claremont graduate Asher Weiss (CMC ‘18) is the co-founder and CEO of Tixologi – an all-in-one, self-serve ticketing platform that puts event producers in control of their ticketing. Tixologi allows event producers to fully customize and integrate their ticketing experience, build a database of fans, and understand all their ticket holders, not just their ticket buyers, eliminate fraudulent tickets, and engage their fans on a deeper level.
If you’re looking to get more for less out of your ticketing solution, look no further than Tixologi. Visit their website today to get started, or email Asher here with any questions. 👇
🚨Claremonster Call-Out: David Huie & Vibrato
David Huie (HMC ‘11) is an experienced software engineer, manager, and entrepreneur, currently leading Vibrato, a company he founded to develop AI-driven solutions for automating phone calls. Before starting Vibrato, David worked at Datadog on Vector, a log shipping and observability tool, and held various roles in InfoSec engineering and management. His career includes software engineering positions at Yelp, NationBuilder, Splice, and Dollar Shave Club.
Vibrato is a service that can make phone calls for you using AI. We call real people and businesses to make you money and save you time. Our customers use us to negotiate lower utilities bills, to dispute charges, make appointments, automate their business, and more. Our product can save you hours of work per month, shortening previously lengthy and difficult tasks to just a click of the button.
Vibrato’s public beta version is now LIVE, and David is looking for more early users who want to try it out for FREE! 👇
💼 Who’s Hiring?: Terra AI & Micro
StoryHouse portfolio company Terra AI is on a mission to provide the premier AI platform for the development of critical natural resources. They're leveraging AI modeling, reasoning, and optimization to enhance the performance, predictability, and safety of reservoir, wind, and mineral development projects. Claremont grad Anthony Corso (HMC '14) and John Mern (who previously worked for KoBold Metals, founded by CMC grad Kurt House) are the co-founders of Terra, and they are looking for a talented Senior Software Engineer to lead the development of their core web application product. If you're interested in learning more, shoot us a message.
Senior AI/ML Engineer (Hybrid) - Ideally, someone with a background in building image-generation models such as Dall-E, Adobe Firefly, etc.
Micro is an AI-powered super app built on top of email that helps entrepreneurs manage their businesses with simplicity. The app organizes data from email and other business tools into interactive “Micro Apps” for every workflow, from fundraising to task management, embedded in a modern email client experience. They’re a seed stage company that’s backed by industry leaders such as a16z, Flybridge, Graph, and 50+ other angels and institutions. Product expert and friend of Claremont Brett Goldstein is the founder and CEO of Micro, and he’s looking for a highly-skilled technical partner to be his co-founder and Head of Engineering. Check out the opening if you know someone who would be perfect for the role.
Check out the other ~5,000 open jobs at 400+ Claremont-affiliated companies here on our Storyboard. Plus, create a profile and enter your preferences to get alerted to new job postings relevant to you, be they the 1,000+ remote jobs, 100+ internships, or 40+ part-time positions available. We’ve published research that shows that Claremont-founded companies that disproportionately hire Claremont talent outperform — so pay attention, Claremonsters!
If any of these roles catch your eye 👀 , apply and mention Between the Lines. Or, if you are an employer looking to hire tip-top Claremont talent, fill out this form to have your jobs featured.
🗣️ Conversations on the Interwebz:
This week’s Claremont financing 💸
Congratulations to Claremont alum Rob Urstein (CMC) and his company, Gather, on their recent acquisition by Mighty Networks. Gather is an online platform that helps leading museums and cultural institutions bring their experiences together in coherent and meaningful ways for their members and the public. Mighty Networks and Gather Learning are joining forces to reimagine the future of digital communities for museums worldwide.
Fastbreak.ai recently announced NBA Equity as a seed round investor and the NBA as the latest customer of their sports scheduling & logistics platform. The NBA will incorporate Fastbreak.ai’s cutting-edge SaaS solution into its scheduling process. As part of this agreement, the NBA will also leverage Fastbreak.ai to schedule the WNBA, G League, and the NBA2K League. Claremont grad Tim Carnes (HMC ‘05) is the co-founder and CTO.
This week’s top listen 🎧
Claremont alum and Gastroenterologist Dr. Russ Arjal (PO ‘97) sat down with Dr. Lisa Mathew on the Gastro Broadcast show to talk about how he got into medicine and his journey to becoming a startup founder. Dr. Arjal is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Telebelly – a tech-enabled cloud clinic that partners with existing brick-and-mortar centers to offer a turnkey channel for GI care using a national network of GI-trained Advanced Practice Providers (APPs).
Can’t get enough of Between the Lines? Follow and connect with us on Twitter!
🍽️ BTL Snacks:
📵 The $25 Million Deepfake Phone Call….. The problems with deepfake didn’t just stop with Taylor Swift. Recently, $25M was stolen after a quick phone call with a deepfake in Hong Kong. A finance worker fell for an advanced social engineering attack using deepfake technology to impersonate his company's CFO. Claremont deepfake expert and Reality Defender CEO Ben Colman (CMC) shared his insights on how this could have been prevented and what companies need to do to stop deepfake fraud today.
🛠️ Top Tools For Your Software Selection Process….. If you’re involved in the SaaS lifecycle and you need tooling, Claremont grad Louis-Victor Jadavji (CMC ‘14) shared a compilation of all the top tools available at each step of the selection process, including Vendr, Topic, Taloflow, and more. He also discussed the nine steps in the software procurement lifecycle and the pros and cons of the tools on his list. LV is the co-founder and CEO of Taloflow, a technology selection platform built for the AI productivity era.
📈 Driving Growth With The Hierarchy of Evidence….. When it comes to UX, just relying on conventional wisdom is often not the right way to go. Claremont grad and Product/Growth Leader Andres Glusman (PO ‘96) recently wrote a deep-dive blog post on using the right data at the right time to make the right UX decisions using the Hierarchy of Evidence. Andres is the CEO and co-founder of DoWhatWorks – a startup helping growth, marketing, and product teams accelerate their conversion rates.
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