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Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

davidzhang.me

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Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#2

Post by ananddass »

Actually no imho. Who defines the goals from the relationship? So 2 APIs talk to each other seamlessly and then what? What's the go to market plan to get both companies noticed in the marketplace? What milestones are we going to set to measure the success of working together? I think APIs have made things more productive in general; less engineering time spent, less contract negotiations etc but has increased the amount of thinking that has to go into what makes a successful partnership between the companies working together. Earlier the definition of success used to be-"integration go-live" but now it's more like "what next?".

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#3

Post by ariannahsimpson »

ananddass wrote: post #2

Actually no imho. Who defines the goals from the relationship? So 2 APIs talk to each other seamlessly and then what? What's the go to market plan to get both companies noticed in the marketplace? What milestones are we going to set to measure the success of working together? I think APIs have made things more productive in general; less engineering time spent, less contract negotiations etc but has increased the amo…

Yeah I agree, and I think the author of the blog post does too as they ultimately say that there will always be a role for biz dev. Still worth considering where they're making the process easier, basically accelerating partnerships.

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#4

Post by zzimbler »

ananddass wrote: post #2

Actually no imho. Who defines the goals from the relationship? So 2 APIs talk to each other seamlessly and then what? What's the go to market plan to get both companies noticed in the marketplace? What milestones are we going to set to measure the success of working together? I think APIs have made things more productive in general; less engineering time spent, less contract negotiations etc but has increased the amo…

What about the 1000's of people that use an API that a bizDev person could never spend time talking to. Sure an API will never replace a human that is needed to do a big time deal, but for everything else it's radically changed bizdev.

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#5

Post by colinsidoti »

For my site in the travel industry, I need a bizdev guy to get me access to the APIs.

Also, not really. There are a ton of biz dev relationships that require more than just an API. Making a public API where "The constraints, the terms, everything is all there" probably isn't worthwhile if you don't plan for many to use the API. In the cruise industry, not many players want access to the cruise API, so they negotiate usage costs and commission individually.

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#6

Post by ibagrak »

Huh? This is gross oversimplification of both APIs and the role of business development. The author somehow conflates deals with API integration. Not all deals (and not all deals are term sheets, whatever) result in APIs integration. Not all API integration coincides with business development activity.

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#7

Post by DavidZhangToGo »

colinsidoti wrote: post #5

For my site in the travel industry, I need a bizdev guy to get me access to the APIs. Also, not really. There are a ton of biz dev relationships that require more than just an API. Making a public API where "The constraints, the terms, everything is all there" probably isn't worthwhile if you don't plan for many to use the API. In the cruise industry, not many players want access to the cruise API, so they negotiate…

APIs definitely won't replace bizdev, but you have to admit, for a lot of industries, it's making the process a lot more efficient.

Look at all the companies that are opening up APIs. The New York Times just opened up an API to their entire catalog of articles, definitely wasn't expecting that. These APIs are making the cost of doing business a lot lower.

Re: Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

#10

Post by EGF »

After reading this I went to find the post from Caterina Fake about Bizdev 2.0 (dead permalink here: http://caterina.net/archive/000996.html) but Chris Dixon summarizes it well by saying that good BD cannibalizes itself sometimes in this post: http://cdixon.org/2010/08/28/good-bizdev-cannabilizies-itsel...
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