Successful Developer Programs

John Musser, October 16th, 2007

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There were a number of interesting sessions at yesterday’s Business of APIs Conference hosted by Mashery. Dave McClure, who previously oversaw the launch of the PayPal developer network, gave an engaging, to-the-point talk entitled “Successful Developer Programs”. If you’re running an API developer network or even thinking of running one, here’s a summary of good ideas and important questions to ask yourself:

Who’s your audience?

• What kind of developers? Indies, small co’s, enterprises? They are not all the same.
• What makes them tick?
• What problems do they have?
• Are there geeks already solving your problems?

Your product better be cool

• Cool = new, innovative, latest tech
• If it ain’t cool, make it cool
• Provide code examples
• Make them either rich or famous (or both)

Your team = more geeks

• Hire extroverted geeks (tough). Bloggers, writers; wiki, forum addicts; try conferences; find the alpha geek driving a crowd of geeks
• Credibility is important
• Recruit a geek advisory board: with target languages/platforms; customer verticals; should already be successful, making money, well known

Geek metrics

• Examples: # new customers; # downlaods; # active developers; # transactoins, $ revenue from APIs
• Tip 1: make sure your non-geek boss signs-off
• Tip 2: assume < 1% convert to active use

API biz model = biz model

• Bake your business model into your api; no free rides
• Hopefully your api is a business development deal
• If your api helps geeks make $, you win

Education = it’s the only thing

• To win you must educate (product mktg)
• To educate you must speak (blog)
• To speak you must do/show (code)
• Tip: do not require registration or login to educate, ever.
• Perhaps require login to make money
• Your api should be invisible to the customer

Marketing = sell the geeks, not you

• What do geeks crave? respsect (always), attention (sometimes), money (sometimes)
• Help sell them: BFF
• Product directory of 3rd party app
• Preferred/certified dev program
• Affiliate/incentives for your geeks
• Send them a steady stream of customers