Twilio The Hell Out Of The Largest And Most Important Industries

Irakli Nadareishvili (@inadarei), Dave Goldberg (@davidgoldberg) and I were having an interesting conversation on the Twitterz, after I posted "As We Recover The Banking Industry Seems To Be Warming Up To APIs", yesterday--on a topic I think is worth repeating regularly, to generate discussion within any business sector.

I think that all three of us are optimistic about what APIs can do in an industry like banking, and because of our experience, we are very realistic about what is possible in the end--realizing not every API will be good by default.

I'll just let you follow along with our conversation, then I'll explore a little more:

What would a Twilio look like for the banking industry? Probably similar to The Open Bank Project or Plaid, and focusing on rebooting, and simplifying just a single slice of the insanely complex banking system. I'm not saying that these two startups are the next Twilio of banking, but I do see them as two potential dynamite holes being drilled into the bedrock of a very entrenched, highly regulated industry, and powerful industry.

I don't see APIs being the silver bullet to the banking industry, or any other industry for that matter. Slow change will happen through the solid execution of an API focused business strategy by one or more of the existing banking powerhouses, at the same time it will also take a wave of API driven banking startups, who hopefully emulate much of Twilio's game plan, to slowly to blast away at the bedrock core of the banking industry.

Another thing to pay attention to, is when the large banks do understand how APIs are becoming the pipes for this new digital economy, they will begin to wield their power and influence, just as other 1000lb gorillas do in business sectors like education, healthcare, and other critical areas of our economy. APIs don't just purify the distribution of legacy power like a rocky mountain stream does to water, it will take the development of some pretty sophisticated API facades to mask legacy complexity, every step of the way.

In a next post, I'll explore what this top down, and bottom up approach looks like, by examining the progress we have all made with open data, and APIs in the federal government.

P.S. Sorry Irakli, I just couldn't use Twilio the "HECK" out of them. I have an edgy image to uphold, but remember everyone Irakli is the first person to use Twilio as a verb!