This project analyzes Stainless, a company that automatically generates - and maintains - SDKs from OpenAPI YAML specifications. The goal is to better understand the product, market landscape, and propose preliminary S&M ideas through a hands-on and proof-of-concept approach.
We've broken down the analysis into four segments: (1) Product, (2) Sales, (3) Marketing, and (4) Finance.
The core of Stainless's business is SDK generation from OpenAPI YAML files.
We've built an MVP to better understand and demonstrate this process (redirects to Vimeo video):
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| Steel Product Demo (Vimeo) |
We generate local SDK configurations by parsing a provided YAML, prompting for the desired SDK language (i.e. Python or Node), and then use Jinja templates to create language-specific SDKs which are then stored in the 1-Product/output-sdk folder. This MVP helps us understand the underlying mechanics of products like Stainless, Speakeasy, and OpenAPI Generator on the open source side.
Key Features of the MVP:
- SDK Generation: Creates Python and Node.js SDKs from local OpenAPI YAML files.
- README Generation for each Language: Automatically generates a
README.mdfor each SDK, outlining the API and its endpoints.
Future MVP development steps include: auto-generating SDK endpoint tests, creating a Click-based CLI, containerizing with Docker, and implementing GitHub Actions for remote connectivity and YAML-driven automation.
The objective here is to identify potential customers via an engineering-first approach. We've focused on three target groups:
- Public OpenAPI YAML's: We used https://api.apis.guru/ - an API that aggreagates API's - to source publicly available OpenAPI YAML files and then wrote a script to parse contact information, documentation links, and the YAML files themselves. A proof of concept to show creative ways of driving growth via sourcing OpenAPI YAML files. The pulled data is in
2-Sales/openapi_info.csv. - API Companies: Next we leveraged the power of web scraping. We developed a Playwright-based web scraper to extract a list of API companies from API-Tracker. This approach can be extended to platforms like the Postman Public API Network. The pulled data is in
2-Sales/api-tracker-pull.csv. - API Platform Engineers: We then targeted API platform engineers. We leveraged Apollo's database to identify US-based API platform engineers as a target audience. The Airtable link to the raw data is here.
Next steps include enhancing workflow efficiency by integrating data into Attio (CRM), using Clay for enrichment, developing a lead-scoring model, and running scaled outbound campaigns with tools like Instantly.
We propose a three-pronged marketing strategy:
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Events: A calendar of relevant industry events to participate in.
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Video/Webinar Content: A schedule for creating and publishing video content (e.g., tutorials, demos, webinars).
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Blog Content: A plan for blog posts covering technical deep dives, use cases, and industry insights with a focus on customer testimonials.
Given the nature of the product, product-led and marketing-led will be key but the business can also uniquely target companies with public YAML files which provides a unique sales targeting angle.
We performed a preliminary competitive analysis to understand the ecosystem and get a sense of pricing. We also jotted down a few investor-esque questions based on our current understanding of the business. See comps_and_ecosystem.json for our competitive analysis. A few observations:
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Speakeasy: The notable "K-Nearest Neighbor" comp that also recently raised venture so will be a notable competitor. A few highlights are their Terraform offering for the infrastructure market and their local CLI which offers a more controlled SDK development experience.
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Terraform Opportunity: Terraform and cloud infrastructure market seems like a very attractice opportunity to enter as it's an underserviced segment that Stainless can capture with our YAML-driven platform.
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Partnerships There are interesting potential partnership opportunities in documentation (depending on Stainless's build vs. buy strategy) as well as with CLI players like CircleCI and API management companies like Kong.
A quick sketch to understand the core levers of the business. Reach out for any questions and thoughts!