6 ms·

I’m waiting for Postman news to drop. Got into a discussion with one of their recruiters in 2021 about their absurd valuation, and boy did he try to spin a tale

com2kid 4y ago
Holy crap postman is valued at 5.6 billion? I... thought it was someone's hobby project. Maybe something ran by a tiny team. Why did they even take funding? Surely making a profit from the get go wasn't a challenge for them? It isn't like there is some huge growth opportunity for them outside of "gain more customers", and pretty much every developer in the world has known who they are for ages now.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Their enterprise pricing is $99 per user, per month. Wow.
  - treis 4y ago
    About a half hour of a developers time per month.
    - allarm 4y ago
      This is simply not true. It is correct for a tiny fraction of developers. There’s people outside of the USA and the Bay Area specifically. A lot of them.
    - tyingq 4y ago
      I suppose, but it seems odd that it would be approx 2x what Intellij charges per year given the much more narrow focus of postman.
- outside1234 4y ago
  I mean why not take funding, pay yourself $400k a year to "CEO" it, sell equity at a crazy price in the B round, etc. etc.
  - com2kid 4y ago
    They'll eventually go out of business, heavily downsize, or pivot away from being accessible to non-corporate users. We'll bemoan their loss, and a lightweight competitor will rise up a few years later that is made by a tiny team who has the huge advantage of knowing what they are building. I am sure postman is one of those products where 90% of the common features are super easy to replicate, and the last 10% take 80% of the dev org to work on.
ketzo 4y ago
Wow, jesus, $6.5B [1] for an API client? 2021 really was a fever dream for VC, huh. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-valued-at-5-6-billion-in-225-million-fundraise/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-value...
- whatever1 4y ago
  It’s a very good one though. It just removes a lot of friction that alternatives impose to you.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    grpcurl enters the room
    - deeptote 4y ago
      grpcurl and httpie are so good it's ridiculous.
  - paxys 4y ago
    What friction does curl impose? I get that a CLI command isn't suitable for everyone, but (1) we are talking about a developer audience and (2) there should NOT be a $5.6 billion valuation gap between the two tools.
    - whatever1 4y ago
      Have you heard about Docusign ?
    - that_guy_iain 4y ago
      All seriousness. Curl should be a billion dollar piece of software. It's so widely used, I suspect half of the apps I use on a daily basis would probably stop working if Curl was removed.
      - 4y ago
knowsuchagency 4y ago
You mean post.news ?
anonymous344 4y ago
lol crazy bubble bursting postman was good, now its awful. luckily there are other hobby projects that are still enjoyable to use
steve_adams_86 4y ago
I don't mean for this to put down the Postman team and their hard work, but I don't understand what its fit is. If I'm writing an API, I'm testing that thing as I work on it, and the tests describe the spec of the API along with any public-facing documentation. I'm also going to provide a nice interface for testing it manually, because there are plenty of tools for doing so. At this point, what does my team gain from using a GUI to interact with the API? Is it better documentation, better accessibility to less experienced devs? I admit I'm naive, I'm probably missing a killer feature. I don't feel like I have an API problem though. They work well, they're tested, easy to use, directory structure/conventions/tests provide good discoverability, docs exist where code falls short, etc. What cool stuff am I missing?

com2kid 4y ago

Holy crap postman is valued at 5.6 billion? I... thought it was someone's hobby project. Maybe something ran by a tiny team. Why did they even take funding? Surely making a profit from the get go wasn't a challenge for them? It isn't like there is some huge growth opportunity for them outside of "gain more customers", and pretty much every developer in the world has known who they are for ages now.

tyingq 4y ago
Their enterprise pricing is $99 per user, per month. Wow.
- treis 4y ago
  About a half hour of a developers time per month.
  - allarm 4y ago
    This is simply not true. It is correct for a tiny fraction of developers. There’s people outside of the USA and the Bay Area specifically. A lot of them.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    I suppose, but it seems odd that it would be approx 2x what Intellij charges per year given the much more narrow focus of postman.
outside1234 4y ago
I mean why not take funding, pay yourself $400k a year to "CEO" it, sell equity at a crazy price in the B round, etc. etc.
- com2kid 4y ago
  They'll eventually go out of business, heavily downsize, or pivot away from being accessible to non-corporate users. We'll bemoan their loss, and a lightweight competitor will rise up a few years later that is made by a tiny team who has the huge advantage of knowing what they are building. I am sure postman is one of those products where 90% of the common features are super easy to replicate, and the last 10% take 80% of the dev org to work on.

ketzo 4y ago

Wow, jesus, $6.5B [1] for an API client? 2021 really was a fever dream for VC, huh. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-valued-at-5-6-billion-in-225-million-fundraise/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/18/api-platform-postman-value...

whatever1 4y ago
It’s a very good one though. It just removes a lot of friction that alternatives impose to you.
- dboreham 4y ago
  grpcurl enters the room
  - deeptote 4y ago
    grpcurl and httpie are so good it's ridiculous.
- paxys 4y ago
  What friction does curl impose? I get that a CLI command isn't suitable for everyone, but (1) we are talking about a developer audience and (2) there should NOT be a $5.6 billion valuation gap between the two tools.
  - whatever1 4y ago
    Have you heard about Docusign ?
  - that_guy_iain 4y ago
    All seriousness. Curl should be a billion dollar piece of software. It's so widely used, I suspect half of the apps I use on a daily basis would probably stop working if Curl was removed.
    - 4y ago

knowsuchagency 4y ago

You mean post.news ?

anonymous344 4y ago

lol crazy bubble bursting postman was good, now its awful. luckily there are other hobby projects that are still enjoyable to use

steve_adams_86 4y ago

I don't mean for this to put down the Postman team and their hard work, but I don't understand what its fit is. If I'm writing an API, I'm testing that thing as I work on it, and the tests describe the spec of the API along with any public-facing documentation. I'm also going to provide a nice interface for testing it manually, because there are plenty of tools for doing so. At this point, what does my team gain from using a GUI to interact with the API? Is it better documentation, better accessibility to less experienced devs? I admit I'm naive, I'm probably missing a killer feature. I don't feel like I have an API problem though. They work well, they're tested, easy to use, directory structure/conventions/tests provide good discoverability, docs exist where code falls short, etc. What cool stuff am I missing?