Kiwicode startup story(12): No vendor lock
This article is one of the articles in a series ‘Kiwicode startup stories’, and you can read the last article ‘Kiwicode startup story(11): Pay by usage = Grow with customers’.
Kiwicode will offer three services: Studio, Service Builder, and Code Generation. For a complete experience, we can already create applications for customers, build services, and generate code. But there’s one thing Adrian and I didn’t think about before: the issues with connecting to other companies’ SaaS products or the entire internet.
Few SaaS companies in China open their APIs or build PaaS. However, in Silicon Valley, at least 90% of SaaS products offer their own APIs or PaaS, with the remaining 10% on the road. Customers can achieve data through the use of API connections. Customers can purchase CRM of Salesforce, marketing of Hubspot, internal communication of Slack, customer service of Zendesk, and connect them through their API. Each SaaS company provides the most professional services in the field, and customers connect with SaaS services through APIs, which are closer to their own workflow. Overall, an open environment will be beneficial. This is cutting-edge in Silicon Valley, and it is also the consensus of Silicon Valley businesses.
Adrian and I will build a 100% global company, and we may move to Silicon Valley and start a business here in the future. Before that, we need to get serious about learning everything we can here.
Another critical factor, just from our customers’ perspective, is that when they create apps, they have a lot of requirements for accessing third-party company APIs. To give a simple example, a customer creates a dashboard application that can view the company’s sales and marketing status, but it requires access to Hubspot’s API to provide the customer with relevant information. We need to develop a tool that allows customers to connect to any API they want because if all we do is provide a list of APIs and tell users that we can connect to their products, there will always be customer needs that we can’t meet.
Now Adrian and I must create an API connection that users can customize, with the data returned by the API typically being JSON for processing. Users only need to fill in the API path and any other required information, such as authorization (depending on the API provider), and then they can use the returned data in our Kiwicode Studio to call the APIs.
Ultimately, we must provide an API connector because we despise vendor lock. We don’t want users to be kidnapped and forced to use a company’s services. If you use this company’s products, you won’t be able to use products from other companies. Customers’ interests are being violated by this type of hooliganism. We could simply allow users to use our products in order to generate more revenue, but Adrian and I are disgusted by this behavior, and customers will eventually leave because there is no long-term win-win relationship.
We have many services and strategies that reflect our steadfast resistance to vendor lock, in addition to the minor function of the API connector. Users can generate all source code with our help. Many people believe that if the customer receives anything, he will abandon you, but I disagree. Kiwicode’s long-term goal is to generate source code and allow machines to program instead of humans. When the code is provided to the customer, the customer has complete control over the code he generates, including the ability to change, delete, or even transfer it to others. Customers benefit the most from open source code because it gives them unlimited options, solves the problem of vendor lock to the most fundamental level, and benefits them the most. Kiwicode should stick to it as long as it benefits customers.
We’ll break down the service’s hosting costs, our SaaS costs, code generation fees. This means that the customer can only pay for the part that he is happy with. Users can use Studio and service builder without paying any fees because our SaaS subscription has a Free plan, but there are many limitations. You can select our SaaS Free plan and then run a large number of services while paying for our services on a monthly basis.
You can also choose our SaaS Pro plan and generate Code multiple times instead of creating Services because you’ve already built your own backend on AWS and don’t need to create new ones. We will not bundle our products; instead, customers will be able to choose the most cost-effective payment option. Customers don’t have to worry about being locked into our platform because there is no vendor lock in Kiwicode.
The next article will be published at weekly intervals. Simply send me some claps and feedback if you enjoyed my story.
If you want to join our product — Kiwicode (a code generation SaaS)’s waitlist, click here.
