Using free products for lead generation

The advice here is sage. If you run a platform-type SaaS business (not necessarily PaaS but more like SaaS with multiple functional use cases, which the OP calls the API business), make sure to read the OP.

To me, this one resonated best:

"APIs have a particularly tough marketing challenge in that the product can have a ton of varying use cases. You need different messaging to multiple customer segments each with their own use cases and needs."

In terms of "doing things that don't scale early on", this is _the_ thing API-as-a-Service companies ought to do. Your users won't build reference apps for you. You need to build them for your customers and make them very easy to use. This amounts to what enterprise software marketers call "solution selling."

Disclosure: I lead marketing at Treasure Data, an early Clearbit customer.

It generalizes even further.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sitorsquat-restroom-finder/i... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.charmin.si...

There's plenty of simple tools that won't make a business by themselves, but will draw plenty of attention to the company that makes them.

I think a great example of this is the Photomath app (photomath.net). These guys are really a mobile vision/OCR API startup and they released Photomath as a free showcase app, which went on to achieve global media coverage and topped the iOS app store for a while.

So, the opposite of alchemy then. Cool. Will now read the article to see how they did it. Oh.

Is Sharelock[0] mentioned in the article HIPAA compliant[1]? It seems that there is a systemic problem of small doctor's offices and insurance lawyers sharing private medical information insecurely. Security is overlooked and not enforced.

[0] https://sharelock.io/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Insurance_Portability_a...

Thanks a lot! I love this article! :)