If only this were more true. API's for most things are...lacking.
A dearth of API's is particularly bad in computer security.
Vendors: We have this great new device to monitor ___ and alert on it!
Customers: We'd like to integrate that with our other devices, and this Hadoop cluster...
Vendors: We integrate with all kinds of stuff!
Customers: Can you show me?
Vendors: You just go to our shitty web front end and click "export." You can get an Excel file or .csv. It's THAT simple! Or I think in the next version we can export to syslog. Larry? Do you know about the syslog thing? Yeah, it's going to do that. We have our engineer working on it.
Customers: Can I query the data directly?
Vendors: Sure! Just go to the web front end and arrange your Boolean logic operations with this impossibly obtuse drag-and-drop graphical programming hack we came up with. Focus groups LOVE it, because you don't have to type to use it.
Customers: What if I want the machines to talk together and query each other without me having to type in a password and click the shitty web front end?
Vendors: crickets ... So how many do you want to buy?
Are you listening, potential YC candidates?
By the way, when you write software, write the API first, then write your cool UI using the API. Yeah, it's a little more difficult at first, but you'll save untold amounts of time in the long run and the product will be better for it.
Edit: In case this wasn't clear, I'm talking to you, you HN-reading recent college-grad who wants to start a company but needs a good idea that doesn't involve social networking. Make network security products with great API's and sell them to companies. Forget about the cheesy front-end, make it easy to get data into and out of. Your target audience is techies who aren't baffled by databases and are willing to spend a month hacking on a system if it helps them query huge amounts of data quickly. Also, you want to charge less than the cost of these techies making the system themselves. Go.
I'm all for right-out-of-college HN readers disrupting schlerotic industries that actually matter rather than making photosharing apps, but careful, enterprise sales looks like enterprise sales for a reason. The reason is typically because enterprise sales is the key to enterprise purchasing departments' lock. You'd like to think that technological superiority and sincerity will let you steal Cheesy McClueless's ten quarterly sales, but sadly, product quality does not necessarily win out.
You don't have to sell to only large companies. I'm sure a lot of smaller companies would appreciate a security product that could grow with them.
And are the odds of success at trying to sell products to businesses any less than trying to create the next Instagram? Seems like a lot of people are focused on the latter. If you're going to do something risky, go for broke. :-)
“Techies” do not usually make purchase decisions. Those products that you describe sell well because the very same features you decry (Excel files, drag-and-drop web UI) are appreciated by those who actually make the purchasing decisions.
Indeed. This is why there's not so many profitable software products between the few hundred $ range and the tens-of-thousands; as soon as you need signoff the cost-of-sale increases enormously.
Honestly it's not more difficult at first -- I've started doing API-first development, eschewing MVC, and it's made life easier. I highly suggest people give it a try!
Public APIs are lacking. If you are an Enterprise entity, and can pay for it, there are some very interesting and scary APIs out there. Yes, then they hire developers to actually use them. Sorry, you're not going to be as capable as a dev team in using an API, even if there was a really nice GUI. Get over it. Complexity is the new barrier to entry.
A dearth of API's is particularly bad in computer security.
Vendors: We have this great new device to monitor ___ and alert on it!
Customers: We'd like to integrate that with our other devices, and this Hadoop cluster...
Vendors: We integrate with all kinds of stuff!
Customers: Can you show me?
Vendors: You just go to our shitty web front end and click "export." You can get an Excel file or .csv. It's THAT simple! Or I think in the next version we can export to syslog. Larry? Do you know about the syslog thing? Yeah, it's going to do that. We have our engineer working on it.
Customers: Can I query the data directly?
Vendors: Sure! Just go to the web front end and arrange your Boolean logic operations with this impossibly obtuse drag-and-drop graphical programming hack we came up with. Focus groups LOVE it, because you don't have to type to use it.
Customers: What if I want the machines to talk together and query each other without me having to type in a password and click the shitty web front end?
Vendors: crickets ... So how many do you want to buy?
Are you listening, potential YC candidates?
By the way, when you write software, write the API first, then write your cool UI using the API. Yeah, it's a little more difficult at first, but you'll save untold amounts of time in the long run and the product will be better for it.
Edit: In case this wasn't clear, I'm talking to you, you HN-reading recent college-grad who wants to start a company but needs a good idea that doesn't involve social networking. Make network security products with great API's and sell them to companies. Forget about the cheesy front-end, make it easy to get data into and out of. Your target audience is techies who aren't baffled by databases and are willing to spend a month hacking on a system if it helps them query huge amounts of data quickly. Also, you want to charge less than the cost of these techies making the system themselves. Go.