Just about everyone at Kynetx Impact is looking to spread the good word and encourage the use of APIs. While developing an API can be a viable option, the assumption behind their rampant production is that an API will help the developer reap some sort of great success. Our very own David Barrett has a different story to tell.
Like everyone, we built out our API with the hope that a bunch of people would integrate, but in fact three things happened:
1) Very few people cared to integrate. Instead, the biggest user of the Expensify API is still Expensify.
2) The vast majority of those people who did integrate never did anything with it. They applied, they talked with our engineering team — in a sense, we paid the entire “cost” of integrating with them, even though they never actually ended up launching anything.
3) Those tiny few people who did actually launch something significant never actually produced any value for us. We had high hopes on both sides that joint customers would see all this combined benefit, but in practice very few did.
Hear David speak and find out the full story of the Expensify API at the Kynetx Impact conference – he’ll be speaking on Wednesday at 11 in room 300. Come one, come all!
