Request For Startup: Turn Any Spreadsheet Into a REST API + Docs
Someone, please build this and I will be your first customer/investor
Sometimes I just wish I had more time, there are so many more things we need to build and we are so early in the Internet. Today I need someone to provide a tool that will let me upload a flat file (comma delimited Excel spreadsheet) and turn it into a dead simple API that I can sell. The tool should automatically create a page for my API with docs, URIs, and let me write example API calls so my customers will know what to do.
How will it make money?
Make the API generation tool, and then take a revenue share on the usage based API calls. If the API calls are free then make it free and the startup gets nothing. Kind of like if you use Eventbrite for a free event and Eventbrite gets nothing. Handle payments via Stripe. Keep it really simple.
Example case: my killer spreadsheet of IPO filing data.
I have an example case. Someone tweeted to me the other day that there really needs to be an API for the data inside S-1s (the filings that companies make with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public). Getting the data out of those documents is a bitch, but now that I’ve done it and I am maintaining a running spreadsheet I’d love to set access to it as an API.
So if you have built something like this, or start hacking on it and want a test case, please tweet to me at @DanielleMorrill. I’ll be your first customer, and if it’s a really killer solution I might scrape up some coins to invest, too. Best of all, I think it could be a huge business.
