Trend #008 - How to make money selling access to data

How far can APIs take us?

Author

Hazel Lim
March 10, 2023

Hey,

Welcome to 63 new subscribers to What The Hype. 🎉

Every other Friday, I will send you a trend alert to make you the smartest person in the room about all things startup.

This week, we are talking about the ONE exploding trend I spotted at the 100 Days of No Code Bootcamp. 

What you will learn:

  • What is the ONE exploding trend no one is talking about in the No Code Bootcamp.

  • Who made $15k/month selling in this space.

  • 3 ideas to get you started in this huge and growing space.

  • A BIG caveat to all of this.

📣 Community Shout Outs

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Dagobert Reneuf - The only guy on Twitter that talks about Twitter algorithms, not concepts. If you want advice that goes beyond "consistency is key" 🤮and really figure out how to algorithm works, check out his How to Dominate Twitter course.

💌 Psst, to get featured like these guys?

Share this newsletter on Twitter, your newsletter (or anywhere!) and send me a screenshot or a link. I will link to you in the next issue! And if you don't know what to say, just write about a cool idea you found down below.   

Let's get back to today's topic 👇

🔎 A big opportunity no one is talking about

Some of you will know that I am participating in a 30-day No Code challenge. I will share exactly what goes down at a challenge like this and my thoughts in the next issue (but here's a preview): 

But in this issue, I want to talk about an opportunity NO ONE seems to be exploring. While everyone (including me) is busy building all flavours of AI-powered apps🤡, one common theme keeps popping up across all of our startup builds.

That theme is APIs. 

👀 But why API? 

The commonalities between all the no-code projects, aside from being built with No-code tools like Softr, Typedream etc, is that at some point, they ALL need to integrate with other software via API calls. 

Example 👇

Let's take Courtney's start-up idea for example. It is a platform for anyone to upload a short-form video, and have it automatically convert into social media post.

Social Media Auto-poster App

(Image: A Hypothetical Social Media Auto-Poster App Idea)

Building such a platform is entirely possible without programming knowledge. Want to see an example step-by-step workflow?

How you can build a video-to-social-media SAAS:

  • A user uploads a video via a form like Tally

  • The information gets sent to Airtable for record keeping (Airtable API)

  • A request is made via Whisper API to transcribe the video

  • A request is made via GPT API to generate text

  • A request is made via BannerBear API to generate images

  • The results get stored in Airtable and are displayed back to users

(p/s: It looks intimidating but it really isn't as hard as it looks.)

Regardless, as you can see, nearly EVERY step in this workflow interacts with an API of some sort.

👁 So how do you build an API?

Although building ON TOP of APIs are fairly accessible for most people, you should have some programming skills if you want to build APIs. Watch Build and Sell Your Own API for a quick intro to the process.

That said, there are some easier (read: no code) options. Here's an example: Use Airtable to build an API 

📈Trend 

I am extremely bullish about this sector.📈 I believe the proliferation of No-code tools will drive up demand for APIs. Here's proof:

RapidAPI

(Image: Google search trend for RapidAPI, a very popular API marketplace)

See how this developer made $15k/month with a geo-location API, or this guy monetises his APIs (code screenshots included)

🧠 Let's brainstorm some opportunities:

1️⃣Turn data into mineable opportunities.

There are large (and very valuable) datasets in supermarket, property sales and company transactions, to name a few. Build an API to cater for this market.

2️⃣Think about what type of apps people like to build.

Off the top of my head, people love building recipe apps, news apps and travel apps. Create APIs that serve up otherwise difficult-to-obtain data.

3️⃣Go B2B.

The BIG opportunity here is going B2B. Disparate datasets in an industry with multiple interconnected stakeholders (like automotive and manufacturing) are good candidates for this.

    💀 Risks  

    • Security and data risks, especially if you were to tackle the higher-end B2B space, or when dealing with confidential data.

    • Dependancy on other third party patforms. You will have to update your API whenever a third-party platform update their structure.

    • That I am dead wrong because... what do I know? I am not a programmer.

    Was this email useful?

    My entire purpose in creating these emails are to highlight unusual opportunities for you to find your next big business idea. 

    I hope it's doing that. If it is, let me know by replying. 

    Until the next one, 

    Hazel

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