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This looks like a promising idea, and potentially solves a problem I’ve faced recently. It’s been a challenge getting my SaaS app connected to fragmented APIs
by jw1224 3y ago
This looks like a promising idea, and potentially solves a problem I’ve faced recently.
It’s been a challenge getting my SaaS app connected to fragmented APIs belonging to many of my customers, each with their own use cases.
One of the biggest hurdles I faced was Asana’s API. A customer wanted us to hook into an Asana webhook: when a task was added to their project, they needed to push the data to their account on our platform (and vice-versa).
But because Asana is so “flexible” (ha!), all the field names in their API responses were UUIDs. It was a total nightmare to figure out which key/values were the ones we wanted. I’m not sure if/how Psychic can figure this out.
Secondly, maybe it’s just how your landing page is phrased — but this feels like “IFTTT for AI tooling”, rather than “IFTTT powered by AI”.
I see a lot more commercial value in the latter direction. To most prospective customers, your headline “Easy to set up” doesn’t mean a React hook and Python SDK. Just give us a REST API! :)
- jasonwcfan 3y agoHey I've been thinking a lot about your comment. Would you be open to connecting non-anonymously? Would love to pick your brain on API integrations. If so you can email me at jason@psychic.dev so you don't have to doxx yourself.
- jasonwcfan 3y agoIFTTT for AI tooling is definitely more accurate! It's not powered by AI... yet. Zapier came out with that recently: https://twitter.com/zapier/status/1658457320849018882 https://twitter.com/zapier/status/1658457320849018882 Definitely worth exploring but as you've experienced there are enough problems with extracting and normalizing data across the long tail of SaaS apps for us to get to reasonable scale. re: the Asana API issue, that's both hilarious and sad. We do plan to build a transformation layer so that all data is reshaped to a consistent schema before sending it off to customers (hence the "Universal" aspect of the API). These quirks of each data source are exactly the kinds of things we want to solve for so our users don't need to worry about it.
- jw1224 3y agoThanks for clarifying. Perhaps I misinterpreted your offering a bit. > “Psychic lets you meet your customers where they are. Never let "do you integrate with that?" be a blocker.” I’d assumed from your marketing that most of your customers’ customers are in places like Asana/Notion/Slack, and so on. If I want to meet them there, I don’t need a vector database or Python SDK. These APIs provide normalised, structured data over HTTP. The problem you claim to solve (disconnect between multiple platforms) can be solved by a service like “IFTTT powered by AI”. But if you offer an “IFTTT for AI tooling”, that’s all good! It just doesn’t seem to align with how you present yourselves. Maybe it’s just product/market fit, or choice of phrasing on your landing pages. Just saying I’d spend a fortune with whoever creates a true “universal API” (in the sense of IFTTT/Zapier), designed for general-purpose use cases over HTTP. Hope that makes sense!
- jasonwcfan 3y agoGotcha! Thanks for the feedback, we'll make the copy on our site more clear. We are solving the "disconnect between multiple platforms" problem, but for a specific use case. TBH I'm not sure it's possible to create a true universal API with the current state of LLMs. Robust integrations tend to be very use case specific. Perhaps something we explore in the future!
- happytiger 3y agoI can’t help but remember the ad for IBM’s UBA. https://youtu.be/AIOqOxI0K_I https://youtu.be/AIOqOxI0K_I There is no magical adapter, but in general platforms that connect a lot of things do well. Love the project.