I use Gumroad for publishing of my white papers, and I also keep an eye on what they are up to as part of my API monitoring--they have a pretty useful publishing API. During my weekly API.Report this last week I came across their Gumroad Small Product Lab, a cool idea that I'd like to see happen in more API ecosystems, or maybe even across them.
According to Gumroad the the Small Product Lab is a "mini course, community, launchpad, and contest to remove the unknowns and barriers to getting your work out in the world"--Ten days, ten actionable lessons:
- Day 1: Mark your calendars
- Day 2: What’s your product?
- Day 3: Plan it
- Day 4: Create a style guide
- Day 5: Ready, set, go!
- Day 6: Share your process and progress
- Day 7: Decoding the pricing puzzle
- Day 8: Package it up
- Day 9: Prep for launch
- Day 10: The launch and onward
Gumroad is focusing on their customer base (media publishing), but the format is something I'd love to see occur in API ecosystems, helping developers and API consumers put API resources to work for them. It seems like something API providers could do quarterly, monthly, or some other relevant schedule, that would really help API consumers be more successful.
The idea of a Small Product Lab, also seems like something that be done across APIs, help API consumers put multiple APIs to work, in the name of a single objective. This kind of approach seems in line with a lot of the micro service, and micro app discussions I am seeing going on across the landscape--when you learn to tackle projects / products in smaller chunks, the chances for success go up (failure hurts less too). Lots of good lessons to be learned along the way!
Anyways, just shedding light on what is going on in the space, and putting the seeds for other ideas out there. I do not have the time to tackle such a project, but will definitely be here to support API providers who do small product labs within their ecosystems, as well as anyone who wanted to step up and do at a larger level. I am also going to consider adding it to my master list of API management building blocks.
