Build any platform by building community first.

1. I ❤ APIs
OCTOBER 13, 2015
How to Grow and Measure
Your API Program
Andrew Mager, Developer Advocate
@MAGER

2. • 1997 - lespaul.com
• 2005 - Planet Blacksburg
• 2006 - ESPN
• 2007 - CNET
• 2010 - SimpleGeo
• 2011 - Spotify
• 2014 - SmartThings
• 2015 - Postmates
Who am I?
Spotify NYC, 2012

3. How do you
start an API
program?
London Music Hack Day, 2012

4. • How is your API unique?
• What is the purpose of
your API?
• Commercial
• Partner/Private
• Experimental/
Research/Government
• Who do you want to use
your API?
• Tell the world with a great
developer website.
Birth of an API
Music Education Hack Day, New York 2013

5. How do you grow your API
program from nothing to
something?

6. • Product owner of the API
• Developer experience
• Tools, libs, changelog
• Education
• Docs, tuts, workshops
• Partnerships/BD
• Marketing & community
• Internal advocate
What does a
developer
advocate do?
Music Hack Day Edinburgh, 2012

7. How do you find a developer
advocate?

8. • Socially fluent
• Fosters community
• Clear, coherent speaking
• Willingness to learn
• Patience
• Eagerness to teach
• Technical
• Empathetic
• Lack of ego
• Readily available
• Inspirational
• Time management
• Product management
• Fun
Skills of a
great
developer
advocate
Tim Falls, keen.io

9. The best developer advocate
might already work at your
company.

10. • Logical, inventive, pragmatic.
• Always looking for the next big
problem to solve.
• Learning new technologies
constantly.
• Testing the limits.
• Independent, sometimes
stubborn.
• Day jobs feed their weekend
hack ideas.
• Short attention-span.
• More than a developer, many
personalities.
Understanding
the hacker
ethos
Music Hack Day NYC, 2012

11. • Add them on Github, DevPost,
Lanyrd, Github, Twitter,
Dribbble, and even LinkedIn.
• Engage again and again.
• Encourage them to contribute to
open source projects.
• Send them monthly
newsletters.
• Vote up and answer on Stack
Overflow.
• Invite them to all types of
events.
• Offer office hours.
• Continue their hacks.
How to flirt
with a
developer
online
The (not too distant) Future

12. • Parse - https://www.parse.com/customers
• Twilio - https://www.twilio.com/showcase/
• Uber - https://developer.uber.com/showcase/
• Stripe - https://stripe.com/gallery
• Google Maps - https://developers.google.com/maps/showcase/
• Keen.io - https://keen.io/#stories
• Apple Watch - http://www.apple.com/watch/apps/
• YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/yt/dev/showcase.html
• Facebook - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/showcase
• Pebble - http://developer.getpebble.com/examples/
• Spotify - https://developer.spotify.com/showcase/
• Github - https://github.com/showcases
• Android Developer Stories - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r36OJaeMo4
Showcase projects built using your API

13. How do you measure the
success of your API?

14. • Monthly active API users
• Daily API calls
• Apps/projects published
• Pull requests/forks/stars
• Website analytics
• Social media
• Email signups
• Partners
• Meetup attendees
• Hacks created
• Swag given out
• Feedback reported
• Beers consumed
Success by the
numbers
Way Out West Hack 2013, Göteborg, Sweden

15. What about the metrics you
can’t track?

16. • Developer happiness
• Event interaction
• Word of mouth
• Good will in the community
• Time spent hacking offline
Measuring the
unmeasurable
HackMIT, 2015

17. THANK YOU!
Questions?
@PostmatesDev
http://postmates.com/developer
@mager (Twitter, Github, Instagram)
http://mager.co