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An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful.

by bravura 12y ago

An important trend is the API-ification of everything. As more and more businesses are accessible with a web API, the Internet becomes more and more powerful. I'd like to invite people to try the early release of Empire API, which is one API for every enterprise SaaS: http://empiredata.co http://empiredata.co Empire is an API for accessing enterprise SaaS services such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Google Apps, etc. It provides a uniform, database-like interface to every service that it supports. Empire makes it easy to integrate data from multiple enterprise services into your own enterprise app. You can click Login to create an account, and we'll send you an API key. Or you can just sign up for the mailing list.

zwegner 12y ago
SaaSaaS? ...which of course leads to the general form, S(aaS)^n.
- bravura 12y ago
  Alternately, it's an API of APIs. We're hoping that S(aaS)^n = SaaSaaS for n >= 2, and we can prove by induction that ours is the last enterprise API you need to learn ;)
ollieglass 12y ago
Interesting premise, but I can't see a list of services you support on your site. Do you have such a list?
- bravura 12y ago
  Check out the Services section in the docs: http://empiredata.com/doc/ http://empiredata.com/doc/ We currently have integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Gmail, Google Spreadsheets, Zendesk, Mailchimp, Stripe, and CallRail. If there's another integration you need, feel free to email us: hello at empiredata dot co [edit: I have added the current and upcoming integrations on the home page: http://empiredata.co/#supported-platforms http://empiredata.co/#supported-platforms]
  - pbiggar 12y ago
    You don't list Stripe on that page, FYI. Add Intercom and you have a customer.
    - bravura 12y ago
      @pbiggar Thanks for that catch. We updated the homepage. I'll reach out to you over email because I'm curious about your intercom.io use-case. I'm also going to try it on our webapp, so we can dogfood it.
pinaceae 12y ago
neat, but SFDC alone is unbelievable ... as in i do not believe it. API limits, governors, etc. will all kill your fancy meta-api. working a lot with SFDC, an API on top of an API is simply performance hell.
- tksfz 12y ago
  co-founder here. it's a good point. yes the Salesforce API limits are still there, and you still need to work around them, but we don't make it worse. you also get the advantage of having a datastore to conveniently persist data that you extract from Salesforce and other data sources, so that you can process data in batches easily.
pbiggar 12y ago
I don't know if you're looking for fundraising, but if so, you have a nice opportunity here. Make it trivially easy to build investor metrics (like, I dunno, suggest queries around the tools startups are using, like mixpanel, intercom, stripe) and graphs, and then you'll be in every deck that they see.
ig1 12y ago
I looked at a few companies in this space when I was at a VC, and the fundamental problem was that they didn't provide enough value to the end developer. Aggregator APIs tend to provide extremely reduced functionality compared to the source API, and the ease-of-use doesn't compensate for this. In most cases it just makes more sense for the developer to spend a day building a custom adaptor for the API. That said I think the SQL front-end is an interesting twist. While developers find it easier to use the source API there are many people (i.e. business analysts, etc.) who can't program but can use SQL and that might be an interesting market to go after (and also a market more willing to pay).
- bravura 12y ago
  Thank you. The pure SQL is a cool twist, because you can instantly start getting fancy, e.g. doing JOINs between different services. In terms of value to the end-developer, there are a handful of value-add services we'll be rolling out that are a pain for people to implement: - Authentication - Federated search - ETL / caching - Record matching / fuzzy inference of foreign-key relationships - Entity de-duplication We also feel that Empire API will be exciting for pure client-side apps and apps that don't want to run a backend, e.g. the sort of apps that would build on Parse or Firebase.
orky56 12y ago
Very interested in your product. With Catalist[1], we are approaching each of these SaaS functions from the ground up. Integrating your product would be huge for onboarding and creating a seamless transition. Let's definitely chat[2]. [1][www.catalist.me] [2][sumedh at above]

by bravura 12y ago

zwegner 12y ago

SaaSaaS? ...which of course leads to the general form, S(aaS)^n.

bravura 12y ago
Alternately, it's an API of APIs. We're hoping that S(aaS)^n = SaaSaaS for n >= 2, and we can prove by induction that ours is the last enterprise API you need to learn ;)

ollieglass 12y ago

Interesting premise, but I can't see a list of services you support on your site. Do you have such a list?

bravura 12y ago
Check out the Services section in the docs: http://empiredata.com/doc/ http://empiredata.com/doc/ We currently have integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Gmail, Google Spreadsheets, Zendesk, Mailchimp, Stripe, and CallRail. If there's another integration you need, feel free to email us: hello at empiredata dot co [edit: I have added the current and upcoming integrations on the home page: http://empiredata.co/#supported-platforms http://empiredata.co/#supported-platforms]
- pbiggar 12y ago
  You don't list Stripe on that page, FYI. Add Intercom and you have a customer.
  - bravura 12y ago
    @pbiggar Thanks for that catch. We updated the homepage. I'll reach out to you over email because I'm curious about your intercom.io use-case. I'm also going to try it on our webapp, so we can dogfood it.

pinaceae 12y ago

neat, but SFDC alone is unbelievable ... as in i do not believe it. API limits, governors, etc. will all kill your fancy meta-api. working a lot with SFDC, an API on top of an API is simply performance hell.

tksfz 12y ago
co-founder here. it's a good point. yes the Salesforce API limits are still there, and you still need to work around them, but we don't make it worse. you also get the advantage of having a datastore to conveniently persist data that you extract from Salesforce and other data sources, so that you can process data in batches easily.

pbiggar 12y ago

I don't know if you're looking for fundraising, but if so, you have a nice opportunity here. Make it trivially easy to build investor metrics (like, I dunno, suggest queries around the tools startups are using, like mixpanel, intercom, stripe) and graphs, and then you'll be in every deck that they see.

ig1 12y ago

I looked at a few companies in this space when I was at a VC, and the fundamental problem was that they didn't provide enough value to the end developer. Aggregator APIs tend to provide extremely reduced functionality compared to the source API, and the ease-of-use doesn't compensate for this. In most cases it just makes more sense for the developer to spend a day building a custom adaptor for the API. That said I think the SQL front-end is an interesting twist. While developers find it easier to use the source API there are many people (i.e. business analysts, etc.) who can't program but can use SQL and that might be an interesting market to go after (and also a market more willing to pay).

bravura 12y ago
Thank you. The pure SQL is a cool twist, because you can instantly start getting fancy, e.g. doing JOINs between different services. In terms of value to the end-developer, there are a handful of value-add services we'll be rolling out that are a pain for people to implement: - Authentication - Federated search - ETL / caching - Record matching / fuzzy inference of foreign-key relationships - Entity de-duplication We also feel that Empire API will be exciting for pure client-side apps and apps that don't want to run a backend, e.g. the sort of apps that would build on Parse or Firebase.

orky56 12y ago

Very interested in your product. With Catalist[1], we are approaching each of these SaaS functions from the ground up. Integrating your product would be huge for onboarding and creating a seamless transition. Let's definitely chat[2]. [1][www.catalist.me] [2][sumedh at above]