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In a world where consumer spend is going to be shrinking amidst an upcoming downturn and consumer CAC going through the rough "vertical enterprise software" is

In a world where consumer spend is going to be shrinking amidst an upcoming downturn and consumer CAC going through the rough "vertical enterprise software" is going to be the next megatrend. Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software solutions exist that people could "Duffel?"

usaphp 7y ago
You could probably say the same about Stripe when they just launched. Authorize.net was doing billions in revenue and stripe just re-invented them with a better suite of APIs.
- legohorizons 7y ago
  Yeah Stripe was the pioneer in this space. Truepill is an API for pharmacies that is doing seriously well and is under-hyped. The API-ification of things is a serious boon for developers everywhere. But financial services (payments) and travel are just two verticals. There are vertical software solutions in healthcare, other aspects of FinTech (lending/wealth management), retail that can probably be re-vamped. The question is what other legacy providers other than Authorize.net/Sabre exist. Where do we find software solutions like this?
- mbesto 7y ago
  Stripe is only loosely synonymous with Authorize.net Your missing the part where Stripe also bundled the payment processing (Stripe uses Vantiv AFAIK) and the merchant account (which you need to get from a Bank). Stripe's innovation was to simply flatten the stack across gateway, processor and merchant bank account. Stripe has an incredible API, but it's only one half of the equation here.
krzkaczor 7y ago
I think access to bank APIs is a similar space. Companies like Tink or Truelayer used to rely on credential passing but now with the wake of open bank apis (PTSD2) they are implementing standard oauth flows. That being said, I think that the biggest entry-level problem in that space is an enormous level of regulations regarding bank data. You can't even start using their API without your app being validated by them.
- Roritharr 7y ago
  >(PTSD2) Thanks, I'll steal that.
- legohorizons 7y ago
  Isn't this the space that Plaid is taking the lead in? What other opportunities are there in the banking API system aside from what Plaid is doing/won't do in the near future? Plaid used to publish https://blog.plaid.com/rfs/ https://blog.plaid.com/rfs/ but they stopped this year.
notahacker 7y ago
The $1.4B Sabre does in airline bookings revenue isn't insignificant but don't underestimate the difficulty of reinventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs from both a technical and commercial standpoint though.
mbesto 7y ago
> Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software solutions exist that people could "Duffel?" I could enumerate 100's of these problems, but this really isn't the right question to ask. The only reason this startup is possible is because the IATA allowed them to be. So perhaps the question should be "how many industries are ready to standardize their communication protocols via modern APIs?" Great example - providing a unified banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business. But it requires the network effect of all of the banks to be involved. This either happens via industry groups or via regulation.
- Spinosaurus 7y ago
  > banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business Why? AFAIK most big banks have APIs, and it would seem to me the use cases for needing to access an account programmatically are few.
  - saarons 7y ago
    On the consumer banking side I would agree with you, not many individuals have complex enough banking needs where programmatic access would be a value-add. However if you look at businesses, any company doing more than (let's say) 50 bank-to-bank payments a month I think would benefit from being able to automate their bank account interactions in some fashion. Disclosure: I work on banking APIs
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      And I would humbly ask for someone to think again about the regular people on a more pragmatic or tech-savvy end. My banking is relatively simple, and yet many of my needs are not covered by any existing solutions. The absolute basics I want is an API access to my current per-account balance. Another step would be programmatic access to per-account transaction history. I don't want to use banking apps and sites daily, they all offer garbage UX that's designed for upselling credit cards, consumer loans and other financial product. What I want is simple API access. I can take it from there, and do a better job than banks do, because my own incentives align better with my own interest.
low_common 7y ago
What do you mean by "vertical enterprise software"?
bradleyjg 7y ago
Concur

usaphp 7y ago

You could probably say the same about Stripe when they just launched. Authorize.net was doing billions in revenue and stripe just re-invented them with a better suite of APIs.

legohorizons 7y ago
Yeah Stripe was the pioneer in this space. Truepill is an API for pharmacies that is doing seriously well and is under-hyped. The API-ification of things is a serious boon for developers everywhere. But financial services (payments) and travel are just two verticals. There are vertical software solutions in healthcare, other aspects of FinTech (lending/wealth management), retail that can probably be re-vamped. The question is what other legacy providers other than Authorize.net/Sabre exist. Where do we find software solutions like this?
mbesto 7y ago
Stripe is only loosely synonymous with Authorize.net Your missing the part where Stripe also bundled the payment processing (Stripe uses Vantiv AFAIK) and the merchant account (which you need to get from a Bank). Stripe's innovation was to simply flatten the stack across gateway, processor and merchant bank account. Stripe has an incredible API, but it's only one half of the equation here.

krzkaczor 7y ago

I think access to bank APIs is a similar space. Companies like Tink or Truelayer used to rely on credential passing but now with the wake of open bank apis (PTSD2) they are implementing standard oauth flows. That being said, I think that the biggest entry-level problem in that space is an enormous level of regulations regarding bank data. You can't even start using their API without your app being validated by them.

Roritharr 7y ago
>(PTSD2) Thanks, I'll steal that.
legohorizons 7y ago
Isn't this the space that Plaid is taking the lead in? What other opportunities are there in the banking API system aside from what Plaid is doing/won't do in the near future? Plaid used to publish https://blog.plaid.com/rfs/ https://blog.plaid.com/rfs/ but they stopped this year.

notahacker 7y ago

The $1.4B Sabre does in airline bookings revenue isn't insignificant but don't underestimate the difficulty of reinventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs from both a technical and commercial standpoint though.

mbesto 7y ago

> Sabre does 3.87B in revenue and Duffel is just re-inventing Sabre with a better suite of APIs. What other legacy enterprise, vertical software solutions exist that people could "Duffel?" I could enumerate 100's of these problems, but this really isn't the right question to ask. The only reason this startup is possible is because the IATA allowed them to be. So perhaps the question should be "how many industries are ready to standardize their communication protocols via modern APIs?" Great example - providing a unified banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business. But it requires the network effect of all of the banks to be involved. This either happens via industry groups or via regulation.

Spinosaurus 7y ago
> banking API is clearly a multi-billion dollar a year business Why? AFAIK most big banks have APIs, and it would seem to me the use cases for needing to access an account programmatically are few.
- saarons 7y ago
  On the consumer banking side I would agree with you, not many individuals have complex enough banking needs where programmatic access would be a value-add. However if you look at businesses, any company doing more than (let's say) 50 bank-to-bank payments a month I think would benefit from being able to automate their bank account interactions in some fashion. Disclosure: I work on banking APIs
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    And I would humbly ask for someone to think again about the regular people on a more pragmatic or tech-savvy end. My banking is relatively simple, and yet many of my needs are not covered by any existing solutions. The absolute basics I want is an API access to my current per-account balance. Another step would be programmatic access to per-account transaction history. I don't want to use banking apps and sites daily, they all offer garbage UX that's designed for upselling credit cards, consumer loans and other financial product. What I want is simple API access. I can take it from there, and do a better job than banks do, because my own incentives align better with my own interest.

low_common 7y ago

What do you mean by "vertical enterprise software"?

bradleyjg 7y ago

Concur