Most of the product managers may find it difficult to understand what role do they play while building an API based product. In this presentation, I would like to cover the following a. Role of Product Manager. How API Product Management is different from Experience Product Management d. API Product Maturity Lifecycle e. Product Positioning and GTM Strategy for API Product f. Best Practices for Building an API Product I would like to use one of the real-life case studies of my journey of building and marketing an API Product at PayPal and share some of the best practices we defined and discovered in the journey to share with other product leaders in this space.

2. • 10+ Years of Experience in Product Management
• Leading Disputes API Product at PayPal
• Worked at eBay, Cognizant, The Hindu
• Passionate about building products
• Domain Expertise in Marketplaces and Payments

7. Work on stuff that Matters

11. • APIs do not have a visual aspect
• Reliance on documentation (“poor” documentation listed as the #1 problem)
• Defining input, output and focus on business value
• Less tangible than experience products
• Intimately understand the audience (developers and end users)
• Testing needs additional tools and skillsets
• Follow industry/organization standards and not build isolated specs

12. • May not meet the needs of users
• Limited Adoption
• Difficult Integration
• Expensive course corrections
• Lack of Customer Empathy and so on

15. Enjoy the Journey

16. API & Experience
Experience only
API only
Discover Define Design Implement Measure
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

22. • Focus on researching developer and user needs
• Stability over experimentation
• Align strategy based on the product lifecycle stage
• Plan GTM and apply API launch framework
• Move up the value chain of an API using Data

25. •
•
•
•
•

27. •
•
•
•
•

28. •
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•