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Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

blog.postman.com

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Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#21

Post by maccard »

mrv_asura wrote: post #8

I have never used Postman, but I am curious, how useful or good, if any, their product is? given the recent bashing it received for being over-valued and being just a wrapper around curl. If people like it and are willing to pay for it, isn't its valuation justified, which I think is true for any startup in general.

It's a good tool, and it's as much a wrapper around curl as intellij is a wrapper around notepad.

That said, it's not worth paying more for than GitHub per seat for my team, so we do without.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#22

Post by nickstinemates »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #13
nickstinemates wrote: post #3

Congrats to the Akita team! Repository is 2 years old. That's a pretty quick exit.

Akita has been around awhile. I remember talking to them around the time docker was still winning the container wars

That could be anytime between 2013 and now :)

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#23

Post by quaffapint »

boredumb wrote: post #9

Insomnia has always served me much better than postman

Postman was the way to go when it first came out. But then they started throwing everything into it so it became the most convoluted and horrible ux I could imagine. I also switched to Insomnia, and it's like going back in time to the cleanliness of Postman way back when.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#24

Post by smt88 »

cemerick wrote: post #10
phpnode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an absolutely crazy valuation for the product / industry. Ultimately they're competing with free & good enough. What's their moat?

As long as they're approximately the only "enterprise" option, that's a moat all by itself. No comment on the valuation, but it makes for a very resilient business.

What makes them an enterprise option? Why does an enterprise need Postman at all?

The collaboration features aren't useful on any size team.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#25

Post by YetAnotherNick »

phpnode wrote: post #4
andrewguenther wrote: post #2

Try as they might, I don't think Postman will ever be able to justify that $5.6bn valuation...

It's an absolutely crazy valuation for the product / industry. Ultimately they're competing with free & good enough. What's their moat?

> What's their moat?

I find this question really annoying. Almost all tech companies have no moat except for maybe brand and network moat which postman also kinda has. What's Apple's moat? Or Google's?

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#26

Post by where-group-by »

mrv_asura wrote: post #8

I have never used Postman, but I am curious, how useful or good, if any, their product is? given the recent bashing it received for being over-valued and being just a wrapper around curl. If people like it and are willing to pay for it, isn't its valuation justified, which I think is true for any startup in general.

It's useful, but it's very hard to justify the $19 per user per month to management unless you're using it constantly like an IDE instead of visiting once in a while to check the docs.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#27

Post by tombert »

finitestateuni wrote: post #16
andrewguenther wrote: post #2

Try as they might, I don't think Postman will ever be able to justify that $5.6bn valuation...

Does postman do anything curl doesn’t? When I was on onboarding at a job my pair started teaching me postman, which ended with me teaching them curl and them dropping postman. If you need to share queries, put them in version control!

Does curl support websockets?

It might, but I think the appeal of Postman is how straightforward it is to play with APIs across basically anything in the HTTP stack, with a nice GUI. Also, I thought Postman also had the ability to export your queries to curl if you want to need to use it outside Postman.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#28

Post by asfasfo »

finitestateuni wrote: post #16
andrewguenther wrote: post #2

Try as they might, I don't think Postman will ever be able to justify that $5.6bn valuation...

Does postman do anything curl doesn’t? When I was on onboarding at a job my pair started teaching me postman, which ended with me teaching them curl and them dropping postman. If you need to share queries, put them in version control!

postman was essentially built as a easy GUI version of curl. Once it went the VC route it kinda jumped the shark.

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#29

Post by Xeophon »

timvdalen wrote: post #17
madduci wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now they are forcing to register to their platform to continue using the collections for free. So most of the users will have to enter their data, or just leave the product (difficult, there's not that much alternative)

Really? I haven't used Postman since Insomnia came out. What's keeping you with Postman?

Isn't Insomnia the same? The parent company (KongHQ) is also backed by VCs @ 1.2B valuation. Whats the difference/better?

Re: Postman acquires Akita for automated API observability

#30

Post by asfasfo »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #25
phpnode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an absolutely crazy valuation for the product / industry. Ultimately they're competing with free & good enough. What's their moat?

> What's their moat? I find this question really annoying. Almost all tech companies have no moat except for maybe brand and network moat which postman also kinda has. What's Apple's moat? Or Google's?

Google has a search index. Apple has hardware & manufacturing IP.
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