Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete? | Hacker News Reader

Are APIs making Biz Dev obsolete?

davidzhang.me

25 pointsariannahsimpson20 comments

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By looking at the API, Instagram immediately knows that they indeed can post a picture on someone’s timeline,

Today. At this very moment.

And tomorrow, without an actual contract, that mechanism could be taken away from you.

Good point. APIs can speed things up, but ultimately you'll need bizdev people to close the deal.

I guess someone remembers pg's tweet: https://twitter.com/paulg/statuses/171840230373081088

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...

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.

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.

The NYT example is a bad one because any commercial use of of the API is forbidden per the Terms of Use [1]. It seems like the API would be a pretty bad starting point if you were a business that wanted a relationship with the NYT.

[1] e. YOU SHALL NOT: (i) use the NYT APIs for any commercial purpose or in any product or service that competes with products or services offered by NYT. (from: http://developer.nytimes.com/Api_terms_of_use)

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.

No, APIs won't make Biz Dev obsolete.

Yes, APIs will cause the role of Biz Dev to evolve to the next step in it's business function in the same general direction that the Internet has forced sales people to evolve.

APIs do not eliminate biz dev, but they do make it easier and faster to get deals done. I get the impression that the author might not have a firm grasp of what business development people actually do ("they do deals" is not a sufficient explanation).

I know that biz dev people love self-service APIs - and that they're no longer the gatekeepers of API keys, and can instead focus that time on creating unique partnerships and closing more deals.

This would be much more insightful perhaps if the author had any actual experience either developing an API or doing business development. He appears to have none.

Nonetheless, as others have said, APIs facilitate and accelerate true business development.

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?".

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.

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.

APIs make deal execution much easier, but there will still be a place for negotiating distribution within an application or through other channels for anyone that is not a completely (or almost completely) open ecosystem.

Just because you built an API doesn't mean anyone knows or cares. Bizdev looks for opportunity and partnerships that will drive revenue for both parties. It is a type of sales; if the company puts time and effort into it, it is expected to produce revenue. This can take nurturing, creativity, and a real life human to make big revenue happen in most circumstances. An API -- from the perspective of bizdev -- helps reduce friction and provides a reusable framework for these partnerships.

An API is only part of a relationship. Even when the relationship is based on an API. For example, anyone can build an App for Shopify's app store. But, some apps are featured more than others, some apps are blogged about more by the Shopify team, and some apps are promoted by Shopify staff in the forum.

Yes, anyone can integrate with the easy to use API, but it's bizdev that turns an integration into a channel to acquire more customers. (This may apply more to B2B software than consumer)

I'm not sure why this title was chosen, the article itself says >So now the million dollar question - have APIs made BizDev obsolete? Definitely not. The articles own title APIs are just BizDev 2.0 is far better.

If the point is more nuanced (i.e., APIs simplify the bizdev cycle in some cases) why use this linkbait of a title?

Electric starter motors made car drivers obsolete.

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