You hear a lot about feedback loops with customers in technology and the world of APIs. There are entire disciplines dedicated to establishing and managing feedback loops with customers as part of the software development lifecycle. However, in my experience few technologists and engineering leadership within startups and enterprises are actually interested in listening to, let alone engaging with customers via these feedback loops. As you can see with the current state of technology and artificial intelligence, people aren’t concerned with what the customers or would be customers of their APIs and applications want or ask for—-you will do AI whether you want or not, and whatever else you need won’t be discussed.
I spent two days at API Days in NYC the previous week where almost every single enterprise I spoke with said they were skeptical of AI, and while there were experimentations going on, they were not convinced it was production ready for any use case, and likely would never be. Alongside this you see every single vendor, even those with non-AI solutions, pushing AI as the solution for everything, stating this is what their customers want, when I was hearing the opposite from the enterprises who would purchase their solutions in the same room. This reveals the shift that has been occurring for well over a decade, that the customers are the people who are using the software you build, but the people who invest in you developing the software, catering to the solutions they want to see in the market to support their portfolio and interests.
Most people working in API technology startups seem to be in denial about who the customers of their company are. I can’t tell if they still believe their marketing and sales pitch, or their interpretive dance for their investors is just so fulfilling for them that they don’t care–regardless, people have “jumped the shark” when it comes to the narrative of product management feedback loops. Most companies I talk with go through the motions to pretend like they have prodduct feedback loops, but are happily steering where things are going without much consideration for customers-—they know the way forward without this feedback. I think they know the way and are so smart because they have a board of investors whispering in their ear that they know the way and are so smart. This is why the stories we believe matter more than the business or technology, because feedback loops are all about the stories being told around us and the ones that we believe.
