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apigee

How a Simple Man from Meerut Changed the Global API Landscape?

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One of the leading technologies to have burst into the scene in recent years is none other than API. Over the past decade, it has proven itself to be a defining and driving force in the IT industry. The API framework allows the software to access other software to perform a particular function or collect data.

Since their inception, API has been helping scientists transform the way applications work and communicate with each other. The growth API’s fueled was so high that a single core API structure helped Twilio and Stripe reach billion-dollar valuations. These frameworks now act as the backbone for several applications we use on a daily basis. Here’s a look at a software company that used API to grow, evolve and attract the attention of some of the biggest names in the tech industry.

What Apigee Does

Apigee is a software company that focuses on providing services related to predictive and analytical functions. The company, founded by Indian origin entrepreneurs Raj Singh and Ravi Chandra relied on API to run processes and work on data. The API development done by Apigee has helped to make communication between devices easier and more efficient. The company provides services including the creation, management, and handling of API proxies. Most of Apigee’s revenues come from subscriptions who run their analytics on the API management platform and a part of it is generated via professional services rendered to customers. Some of the added premium features the company provides is the ability to monetize APIs, traffic isolation, PCI-DSS compliance, and multi-region deployment.

About the Founders

Co-founder Raj Singh is a serial entrepreneur who has a string of successful start-ups behind him. He is the brain behind the jackpot start-up Fiberlane and also the venture capitalist firm Redwood Venture Partners. Ravi Chanda meanwhile, joined Sonoa as the COO. Prior to working for Apigee, he served as the VP of Engineering at Redback, and the company’s VP of Product Management and Engineering, Kishore Seshadri and Ravi Krishna respectively, are ex-Redback employees. The team is rounded up by CTO Vikas Deolaliker, whose impressive resume includes a stint at Sun Microsystems Inc.

Image Source – Google

Raj Singh hails from Meerut, and did his Electrical Engineering from Roorkee, before joining the Navy. He worked on INS Vikrant but found the work to be boring and so left, taking up a Masters in computer science from IIT Delhi. He followed this up by joining the University of Minnesota for an MS in computer science. Between 1981 and 1995 Raj worked for CDC, National Semiconductors, Trilogy Systems, Cirrus Logic, and Inter HDL. Then he ventured into his first startup Advancel Logic, which later became Fiberlane and Stratum One.

Raj’s Multiple Efforts

Singh led InterHDL, which worked on EDA tools for chip design, and sold it to Avant. Next, he found, Advancel Logic which went with Noise Cancellation Technologies. Raj Singh founded Fiberlane in 1996, which he then split into three parts; Cerent, Siara, and Cyras. Out of these, he sold Cerent to Cisco for $7 billion, Siara, meanwhile went to Redback for $4 billion, Cyras was taken up by the Ciena Corp. for $2 billion. He then left the company to form StratumOne, a company that built semi-conductor chips. This company as well went away to Cisco, and we are only half-way done at this point!

Following this, he created Roshnee, which split in two pieces: Inara Networks and Optovation. He then switched over to Corona Networks and worked as a CEO there before leaving to reenter the chip market. Singh and Raj Parekh took over RealChip, and steered it towards success, before unloading and moving on with other interests.

Founding Apigee

The company started out as an XML processing software-based company, working on semiconductors. The markup language was an industry favorite when it comes to operations such as transaction processing. Furthermore, most router companies used XML to switch and route traffic on their systems, in place of Ethernet and Internet Protocol.

Accelerator microchips were adept at language processing help in processing XML and HTML. Some of the early players in this field were Xambala and XaQti. It is interesting to note that Singh was an investor in Xambala, way back in 2001, indicating how interested he is in the industry. Though Sonoa started out with building such chips and engaging in research in this field, it soon changed verticals.

Sonoa Systems began as a project in Santa Clara, California, in 2004. Two years later, the company brought in Chet Kapoor to run its operations as CEO. Though initially, the company worked on creating routers for SOA governance, their priorities quickly changed. Soon enough, the company branched into cloud computing and building application platforms.

They launched a Beta version of Apigee in 2009 giving users a platform to runs their analytics. A year later, the company switched names Apigee and began functioning as an API Management platform. Soon enough the initial application came out with several premium featured added to it.

Success and Subsequent IPO

The platform was an instant success, and soon enough attracted big-shots such as Netflix and Walgreens. In 2012 Apigee acquired Usergrid which works on Mobile API applications, and in 2014, they acquired InsightsOne, which primarily works on Predictive Analysis. The company went public in 2015, raising $87 million via its IPO on NASDAQ. Apigee along with SmartBear and IBM, after receiving backing by Linux, founded the OpenAPI initiative. In September 2016 Google acquired Apigee for $625 million in 2016, owing to the phenomenal work they were doing in the API market.

Apigee grew in a stellar fashion with several high-profile clients including 20 of the Fortune 100 companies. They have a presence in over 30 countries, making over $52.7 million in 2014. The company initially raised $173 million with the help of investors like Vilicus Ventures and Juniper Networks. The IPO gifted them another $87 million, by selling 5.1 million shares at $17 per share at a valuation of $409 million.

This stellar growth and acquisition prove how the entrepreneurial spirit thrives in spite of everything. A simple man from Meerut changed the face of the chip industry, and the world is better due to it. It will be interesting to see what Raj has up his sleeves next!

buffer

Tweeting the Right Way : Success Story of Buffer

Leave a Comment / Founder, Marketing, Product Management, Social media, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

With the Internet having expanded exponentially, in the past two decades, it is harder than ever before to keep people engaged. Whether it is a fashion brand or a blog, it is no longer easy to keep customers interested, because there is just so much competition out there. With over 124 billion business emails being sent and received every day, how do companies and brands stay relevant? The only way to stay ahead is to have the right content development and marketing strategy. Having the right digital marketing strategy can now make or break companies, and that is where companies like Buffer help make a difference.

Joel Gascoigne and Leo Widrich founded Buffer in 2010, and it has over the years developed to become one of the biggest players in the social media marketing management niche. The company banked over $1 million in cash recently and even raised more than $3.5 million in the capital. They have also experimented with several things, such as making the hiring and recruitment process a lot more transparent, investing in employee training and even trying out self-management. These pendulum shifts in management did not hamper Buffer but rather contributed to its growth, so much so that, it has over 700,000 users a month now.

The Founders

Being an entrepreneur is not just about mergers, acquisitions and bottom lines, but rather, it is an emotional rollercoaster that is fascinating. No story is more engaging in that aspect than Leo Wildrich’s; the man who co-founded a company that hauls in profits over $10 million a year.

Buffer founders
Image Source: flickr.com

Leo Widrich was born and brought up in the quaint Austrian town of Melk, and dreamt of becoming a professional footballer. Though a part of the football academy in St. Pölten, a knee injury at 15, saw him bid farewell to that dream and focus more on his academics. Once he was done with school in Vienna, his fellow schoolmates inspired him to go to college abroad, and so he did, choosing to attend Warwick Business School. Here, he met Joel Gascoine who, at the time, was working on a prototype for a social media management software. The two friends decided to join forces, and soon enough, the small idea grew till it became a full-time job, which made the pair quit college and move to the Silicon Valley.

Founding Buffer

Seven weeks into the company’s inception, users started paying for the service, and angel investors contributed 400,000 euros just before their personal investment ran out. Buffer, which started off as a tweet scheduling app soon evolved into a social media management app which makes over $4 million a year. Buffer now helps startups manage their Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn marketing efforts, and has turned into a kind of entrepreneurial necessity.

Initially, Joel wrote the code and Leo Widrich marketed the software. Early on, Buffer had difficulty finding a voice because most top blogs refused to air their pieces. As a result, Leo set up the Bluffer blog and began by writing the blog’s initial pieces. Starting with three articles a month, demand quickly led to him writing over four articles a week. Thus, the wheels were set in motion, and Buffer started gaining momentum. Ten months later, Buffer had more than 100,000 users, and this prompted the duo to leave for Silicon Valley to start their fundraising.

The Success

Following the shift to the US, Buffer started recruiting more writers to keep up with the demand. Over 45 writers posted as guests on Buffer, and slowly yet surely, the tribe began to grow! It was not just the number of writers that grew, but also the frequency of posting. From three articles a month, the Buffer blog now posts almost daily. They got themselves on an AngelPad platform, raised multiple rounds of funding and grew to amass over a million users. The company even acquired Respond to expand their business. Over the years, they revolutionised the industry by bringing forth unique policies that celebrated transparency and even survived a compromising hack.

Presently, the company boasts a team of over 80 employees spread across the world, working in over 15 different countries. Since their early days, Buffer has emphasized on providing a great environment for their employees, and this, in turn, has led to the great employee and customer satisfaction. Having proven their mettle time and time again, the company now helps brands as large as GitHub, Shopify, Huckberry and Microsoft do their business.

Having shaped their entire company policy around customer satisfaction and brand building, helped Buffer grow an extremely loyal customer base of over a million users. Maintaining a high-quality blog has also gone a long way in helping them keep their customers engaged. Most of their blogs now garner up to 4000 shares on Twitter, with some of them occasionally hitting 8000 shares. Hence, it is easy to see that Buffer’s success is mainly due to a well-established and thought of marketing strategy, which is exactly what it helps other companies do!

Leo Widrich’s story is so much more than just a success story, but rather is a testament to the human spirit and is an inspiring tale of pushing and discovering yourself. From travelling the world, enjoying the best of things, Widrich moved to the woods and found himself. More than anything else, this story re-iterates how important it is to stay true to yourself even when it isn’t easy to do so.

Alexa Event

Amazon Alexa Event : Everything That Amazon Announced this Year

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The festive season is almost here and so the Amazon’s sale is. Amazon ahead of its upcoming season sale hosted its Alexa event, and to include more products to its sale, the company just introduced a new lineup of products at the event.

Last year, the company released around 70 products, including the echo speakers and many updates to its old products. Though we get the idea about the new launches in advance through some of the leaks, this time, Amazon was successful to keep the things under the wraps. But as the event is final over, we have got news about everything it launched at the Alexa event.

The Alexa Event was an invite-only event and the company took it to the stage to introduce its guest with new Echo devices, new Echo earbuds, a new Echo display, Smartglasses, and even a revamped oven powered by Alexa.

Alexa Event
Image Source: cnn.com

This time, the company came up with some unique upgrades to its Echo devices, like an Echo Dot with a clock. Amazon has now included a LED clock to its Echo Dot, that can also show the weather. The clock can be switched off, if not required. You can also use it to set the alarm. For this new feature, you need to pay an extra $10, making the price of Echo Dot a $59. It means the old Echo Dot is still there, and you can even buy it without the clock.

After Google’s Nest Max and Apple’s HomePod, this time, Amazon has brought its new Echo Studio, that offers a 3D audio and Dolby Atmos. The devices include a 5.25-inch woofer, and a 1-inch, front-firing tweeter. There are also three, 2-inches, mid-range speakers included in the speaker to provide awesome audio quality in different directions in the room. The company has also added the lossless music playback to the speakers, such that it will produce a great sound when Amazon’s HD songs are played on it. The speaker costs $199.99.

Amazon, like the other big companies, has now brought new Echo earbuds that also render support for Alexa. The wireless earbuds are incorporated with Bose’s Active Noise Reduction Technology and cost $129. These super small earbuds can run up to 5 hours with full charging, and with its case, you can charge them three times. These earbuds are one of the surprise elements from Amazon.

Another surprise product that the company revealed at the event is the 8-inch screen Echo Show 8. The devices come with an inbuilt camera and have got an HD display, such that you can make quality video calls through it. The device is perfect for watching videos, playing music and even keeping an eye on your kids. The price of the device is set to be $129.

Incorporated with four micro speakers, the company introduced a pair of eye frames costing a $179.99. The eyeglasses offer support for Alexa, such that it reads the notification and other information to the user. The eyeglasses are connected through the smartphone and lead the sound directly into your ears. There is no display, but Alexa will do all the work for you.

Another unique product that the company released during the Alexa Event is a Ring named Echo Loop. The $129 ring is a smart ring featuring a haptic engine and two microphones. The ring and the frame will only be sold on an invite-only basis.

Other than these devices, the company launched a $249.99 Alexa-powered smart oven, a $25 Echo Flex device, $249 Eero router, Amazon Sidewalk (a device to connect all the IoT devices around you), etc. There have also been some new upgrades to the Amazon devices, like the multilingual-mode and Neural Text to Speech model added to Alexa.

Twitter is Preparing to Roll Out New Features Presence & Threading

News, Product, Product Management, Tech News / By

twitter
Image Source: bgr.in

Facebook, Instagram and many other social media platforms have included the status feature to their inbox that shows if the user is currently active or not. Facebook also allows the user to choose between showing its status to its followers or not.

On 1 September 2018, Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter also talked about some new features like Presence, to be added to Twitter, through one of his tweets. He wrote, “Playing with some new Twitter features: presence (who else is on Twitter right now?) and threading (easier to read convos)”.

As he has talked about Presence and Threading, it clearly shows that those two features are somewhat similar to the Facebook’s Messenger’s features. With Presence, you will be able to see all the online users and you can easily engage with them. Also, Threading will help you follow or stick to a particular thread of conversation, in an easier way as compared to the current embed and click-through method.

Most of the Twitter users have given positive feedback to the threading feature as they mentioned that with the present thread it is difficult to go through all the tweets using the @reply and is a bit annoying. But, most of the users disliked the Presence feature as showing the other users the online status can be disturbing. Upon which the Twitter’s head of product Sara Haider replied, “would definitely want you to have full control over sharing your presence.”

It means that the user will be able to update its status according to one’s will. According to Dorsey’s tweet, Twitter is only performing the test right now and he has not mentioned the particular date when the new features will roll out on Twitter.

Create wireframes with Balsamiq Mockups

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One of the major aspects of the Product Management is to create wire-frames or mock-ups for introduction of new features or enhancement to existing feature set. A mock-up, in simple terms, is a outline of how a particular screen or feature on the product (desktop application, mobile application or website) might look. A mock-up contains all the buttons, menus, text boxes and other functionality that the final product will have.

Product Managers have to create mock-ups or come up with first cut design interact and then go through number of iterations of refining it based upon the feedback of various stakeholders. …

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