I have seen a lot of API service providers come and go over the last decade, and I always appreciate when simple, useful, and purpose built API solutions emerge. I can use up most of my fingers counting the number of innovative API startups to emerge in the last couple of years, which is something that really makes me happy. One of the API startups that caught my attention lately, and I recently had the pleasure of connecting with, was Bump. I usually like to formulate my own words for describing what an API startup does, but I think that Bump’s description does it more justice than I could.
This isn’t just an API documentation solution. This is an API change management solution that realizes that documentation is the face of change within most organizations. Bump is an elegant, beautiful, and purposeful API change management solution built on the foundation of OpenAPI and AsyncAPI, helping ensure that your API documentation is future proof. It isn’t future proof just because of the of the built-in change management. It is future because it realizes that a diverse API toolbox is required to get us into the future, and that OpenAPI and AsyncAPI are how you will manage the evolution of API operations into this future. Ensuring that the surface area of your HTTP, TCP, MQTT, AMQP, Kafkam and other APIs are all working in concert, and are machine readable by default, but also human readable in a way that allows developers to always keep up with what is going on.
Bump represents the latest wave of API service providers who are refining upon the existing building blocks of doing APIs, but also work to more seamlessly weave these building blocks into our existing software development lifecycle using Git and the CLI, while also abstracting away some of the entropy introduced through the forward motion of our API operations. Then smartly, Bump adds a discovery layer to all of this with their API hubs offering, touching on many of the top pain points of any API provider in one simple yet elegant SaaS offering, while also innovating in new and useful way. Which demonstrate a pretty solid understanding of how to deliver APIs effectively, but also having put some serious thought into how you can actually move things forward in any sort of meaningful way. Resulting in a startup that I am pretty eager to see evolve and mature as a mainstream API solution all by itself, or augmenting another solution like Postman.
API service providers like Bump reminds me ow far we have come when it comes to API documentation over the last decade. Documentation is the most meaningful and tangible stop along the API lifecycle, and I enjoy seeing innovation at the edges of documentation, which historically has been a pretty commoditized portion of API management package. I started studying API management in the summer of 2010, and Bump represents the continued expansion of the API management universe, which is something investors thought was all done by 2016. Bump shows how critical API documentation is to our API operations, but also how intertwined it is with the change that is occurring across API operations, as well as the discovery of our digital resources, capabilities, and events across the enterprise After watching the speed at which Bump moved to support the OpenAPI 3.1 release, and their forethought in also support AsyncAPI, I will definitely be keeping an eye on what the Bump team is up to. From what they’ve built so far I am guessing that they will be helping lead the API conversation in the next couple of years.
