The story of Pinboard's sixth anniversary came up on my API monitoring this last week, and beside being funny as shit, it reminded me of how successful APIs can be, even when they do not follow traditional funding paths. Let me preface this with the fact I'm not against companies seeking funding, so that the usual suspects do not crawl up my ass. In my opinion, Pinboard is an important API economy story, and something I want make sure API entrpreneurs hear.
First, I am a pinboard API customer. I was one of his early buy-in customers, and it has been a critical aspect of API Evangelist operations ever since. If you read stories on my blog, or read my API.Report, you are seeing the value exhaust generated by Pinboard. Pinboard is service that does one thing well.
Maciej Ceglowski, the founder of Pinboard has done well in providing the social bookmarking service, complete with a simple, yet robust API. He has worked to optimize his business model, in an open transparent way, that doesn't negatively impact users, while also keeping the service up and running for six years--without taking VC money that could potentially change everything that is Pinboard.
I used Pinboard along with AWS, and Instagram in my support of EFF in filing the Amicus brief in the Oracle vs. Google API copyright case, in addition to depending on it for my own operations. Pinboard is a cornerstone of my world, and I consider it to also be very important model for the API economy. Not every resource, available in the API needs VC funding, something that in my opinion has derailed some very valuable API operations.
When crafting your own APIs strategy, and thinking through your business operations, please think of Pinboard. While the service may not be the shining unicorn Silicon Valley worships, it is an extermely valuable part of the API economy, a sustainable business for Maciej Ceglowski, and all without taking on loads of investment.
