Fara Jituboh, Okra

Thank you for tuning in to today’s full episode of the Breaking Changes podcast. I’m your host and chief evangelist for Postman, Kin Lane. With Breaking Changes we explore specific topics from the world of APIs, but through the lens of business and engineering leadership. Joining me today we have Fara Jituboh, co-founder and CEO/CTO of Okra. Fara shared with me a pretty compelling view of why API first is how the next generation of applications will be delivered in Africa, helping me see beyond the API driven startup momentum that we have here in the United States. Let’s start with the basics: who are you and what do you do?

My name is Fara Jituboh and I am co-founder and CEO of Okra.

What does Okra do?

Yeah, sure. So with Okra, we’re an API, we enable developers and businesses to build personalized digital services and financial services for their customers. Our goal essentially is to digitize financial services in Africa.

So what brought you to this opportunity? What’s been your journey to get here?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up, so funny, I was born in Nigeria, so Okra, I should mention, is primarily based in Nigeria, we’re a Nigerian fintech startup. I was born here, but I grew up, I spent most of my formative years in Saudi Arabia, and then I moved to the States later, but a lot of my childhood was spent in front of a computer. So I think that my love for computers started when I was like five years old on a big Macintosh, the ones where half of it is connected with the floppy disk drive, and just really amazed about all the games I was playing and like, how did this even get on this computer? And then when I went to school in the States, I moved to the US probably when I was like eight years old, and I think, there too, I used to spend all my time in front of the computer. And then when I got to middle school, they were like, you know, there’s a class on programming, and I was like, yeah, yeah, I want to do that, I want to see how to get all these things onto a computer myself. And then from there I just kind of started building, back in the early days of like Yahoo GeoCities, building websites for kids to play games, aggregating a bunch of games from all over the web when it was really still new. And just really, I think that’s when I got a passion for building stuff and building these products. And, you know, fast forward, I went to school for computer science, I graduated and just started working in corporate America, quickly realized, yeah, that’s not for me, and then shifted and started working for startups. I mean, I’ve always been an engineer, but I just wanted to kind of be a bigger fish in a small pond and build really cool products across the continent. And I got to, I moved back home in 2014 to Nigeria, and it blew me away the amount of opportunity that was here in terms of building things that just didn’t exist yet. And like, coming from being able to use certain apps like Mint and so on, and not being able to use that, I mean, when I moved back, if I wanted to have an apartment, you pay for the whole rent, the whole year up front. If you’re buying a car, you buy the whole car up front. And I think that these kinds of building blocks made me realize that there was a really big gap when it came to data access and this infrastructure, this actual layer to build real financial services. And my co-founder David, he had a really strong thesis on the fourth industrial revolution and what that meant, and then we just really decided to team up and join forces and kind of build Okra. And we just started connecting the banks as an MVP to see if it actually was even possible, and then once we were able to do all that, we soon started thinking, you know, how big can this get?

So I think in the US, I mean there’s a lot that we take for granted with how long our financial system’s been in place, but as far as the tech evolution, the Stripe, the Plaid, the Mints have kind of laid this foundation, and a lot of us refer to this as the API economy. But I would say what they enable is actually the in-the-API economy, so it’s the gig economy, the delivery, the food ordering, groceries. So what does Okra enable, and how does it differ from what we know in the US? I’m sure there’s a lot of the same, there’s an overlap, but yeah, what’s different as well?

Yeah, so there’s definitely an overlap. We still have the same, we still want to access the same type of financial services here on this continent as anywhere in the world. So whether or not that’s spending, growing, managing your finances, you want to be able to do that digitally, you want to be able to do that in a very now type of way. But I think what’s different is maybe the access points that you would do that through. So like looking at USSD for instance as an access point here on the continent, or even the methods in which you would do that would be a bit different. So we found that we are building, we feel as though most of the products that are going to be created from Okra don’t even exist today. So what we’re building for is to enable the next generation of financial services in Africa. Our goal is to connect a billion Africans to the global economy. So we feel as though how far this can go is tied to this infrastructure essentially.

So is the existing banking and finance sector in Africa ready for this and game for this? Are they on board with your vision and program?

Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, definitely. We right now have financial institutions, fintechs, banks as our customers as well, because the conversation everywhere is digital transformation. Even the bank wants to serve their customers digitally. The way to reach more customers is not opening more branches, it’s serving them online. And so I think that there hasn’t been a lot of opposition against what it is that we’re doing, because the aim is to essentially enable the financial services sector, the banks and so on, to actually build this truly personalized solution. I think the next, if you look at the fourth industrial revolution and personalization and AI and so on, and the way that we’re moving generally, you’re not gonna win if you don’t know how to use these tools to do these things as well.

Kind of the early days of Stripe, Twilio, Plaid, there was a heavy leveraging of developer ecosystem, and that’s why we have developer relations. Basically what I do is, is there enough of a developer ecosystem to build that next generation of apps that you need in the markets that you’re targeting?

Oh, I think 100%. I mean, something like, if you even look, some of the best engineers in the world I think are in this continent. And I think that even if you see generally, as we’re moving into this post-pandemic or this pandemic world, you see this shift around even the remote work culture, and where people, you see people building, and all types of companies. I think that we definitely have a large developer ecosystem, we have people that are building so many products across a wide array of financial services today. And you even see that by the just sheer amount of funding that’s coming onto the continent as well. So I think that we’re at this influx stage where these rails are being built, this infrastructure is being built, whether or not it’s what we’re doing, in payments or in data or whatnot, you see these rails, and then you see that enablement of these financial services continue to scale and become bigger. So you even have fintechs that were using us yesterday, or were not using us last year, but today can do something completely different now that they are. So I think that, in combination of the fact that that ecosystem does exist, they’re the developers that want to build, now having the actual tools necessary to do that, it’s where that kind of plays a part.

What’s you guys’s process and approach to the feedback loop around this? How do you keep your finger on the pulse of what people are needing to build and keep up with that?

No, I think that, being able to be reactive, that’s a really good question. I’m sorry, being responsive, not reactive, moving out of a reactive mindset. Like even, for instance, Postman, we’re talking about this podcast right now, it’s something that we use internally to kind of sync up teams between QA, documentation, engineering, to kind of work together. Because once you can start documenting your routes, not just externally but internally, so a lot of people look at documentation and look at the usage of, like, what do developers see of your product when they’re trying to integrate this, but there’s another aspect of, what do engineers internally see in the product in order to maintain, to scale, to fix, to understand it. So I think that we’re taking a very response-based approach, whether or not that’s through QA, whether or not that’s through customer engineering, whether or not that’s keeping a complete customer feedback loop going at all times, just to make sure that not only do we understand what customers need in order to scale their businesses, like what new things they’re looking for, but how do we help them maintain and scale the existing things that they’re using.

What skills or traits do you look for in a developer adding to your team to help y’all build out your whole platform?

Um, that’s a good question. I think that we look for people with a big drive. Ownership, accountability, drive, like that innate, I want to say maybe even conviction. Because I think that what we’re building is super tough, it’s hard, and we’re creating infrastructure and rails where they didn’t exist before, and there’s always a fire burning, there’s always a million fires to put out. So having that ability to find people that, this is what they would be doing whether or not, you know, today or tomorrow, they just have this passion to build, has been good. And just being able to find people that are truly excellent at what it is that they do. Being able to say, you’re excellent in QA, you’re excellent in product, you’re very excellent in services and tools or customer engineering, finding people that are masters of their craft as well, and then just understanding that the best people build the best products. So really taking that approach to just knowing that the world is your pool when it comes to that.

So are you targeting the entire African continent, or are you just focused on specific markets right now? What’s your scope look like in this moment?

So right now we’re in Nigeria, we’re also expanding and piloting in like South Africa, Kenya, a few other countries as well. So our goal has always been for Africa to compete. So for us, this starts here in Nigeria, and it moves into making sure that no matter where you are in Africa, we enable you to have access to that global economy.

Do you have to deal with a lot of government interference, processes, bureaucracy? What does the government landscape look like for y’all?

So for us, we’ve always maintained the fact that we ride on user consent. We have something in Nigeria similar to GDPR, which is like NDPR, and just making sure that, regardless of what, everything we do is helmed on the fact that the customer decides, they decide who they’re connecting to, who they’re sharing their data with, etc. So because of that, we haven’t seen much of any type of regulatory government thing in that sense. And I think it’s also just to look at the fact that here we just make sure that this rides on customer consent at the end of the day, and you’re just building on, I think, the right foundation early on.

So exactly where we started, I would say, in the US, without those needs and those privacy concerns, and we’re having to reel things back in a little bit now. So how do you get the word out about what Okra is building and doing? What’s your most effective communication tools for spreading the word?

For spreading the word, I think that, I mean, I think one thing, it’s one of those things that had to be built right, so it’s one of those things that there’s a general real need for. So we make it easy for people to find us, onboard and get started and start building, but we also do, of course, business development and outreach as well. So to businesses that need financial services, any type of business that’s trying to serve their customer digitally as our customer. And I think that also word of mouth, you know, when someone can go from doing something in a week to doing that in 10 seconds now, they tend to spread the word a bit as well. So we also get a lot of word of mouth when it comes to that.

What are your biggest challenges in taking your business to where you want to see it in the next six months to a year?

Six months to a year, I guess it’s always people, right? So we’re growing, and with that we’re scaling. I always say that it’s not only that you want to scale your business, you’re also scaling your technology. So getting the right people to do that, and getting them in early in a way where they can start adding value, is one of those things that we think about all the time. So for us, we’re consistently hiring, especially around product, engineering, and it’s one of those things where we kind of understand what it is we’re building, we understand our roadmap and how it needs to get there, and so now it’s like placing in the actual great people that’ll come and help work on that problem.

Yeah, the people side is always the challenge, no matter where you are, as a startup, as an enterprise. 95% of API problems are people problems and people’s problems.

Exactly, yeah.

So a lot of us like to think the perfect technology solution or perfect API design is going to save everything, and there is so much more to talk about. What does the security landscape look like for you? What do you think about when it comes to security?

Oh man, we just, security is something that we thought about a lot in the beginning, because you’re dealing with people’s data, you’re dealing with people’s sensitive information, and so you want to make sure that they feel, one, it’s like even a double-edged thing now, because you’re looking at your end user, your consumer that wants to feel safe as they’re using their favorite fintech product, and connecting their financial account to get whatever service. And then you have your client, that B2B2C, so you’re B2B, and that person that wants to make sure that their customers’ data is safe in your hands, and you’re actually, they can trust you, because the name the customer knows is theirs. And I think that we made sure in the beginning that we built this with financial services, the top standards in mind. So whether or not that is with encryption, whether or not that is with our architecture, like our DevOps architecture for instance, or whether or not that’s even with risk mitigation around even building the products, or whether or not that’s pipelines, because, even aside from security, one of the biggest risks is, your service should be working, so like, is your API up, did it go down, and making sure that you can handle that as well. So for us, we just really took a lot of those things seriously early on and made sure that these things would not come back to haunt us later, and so, you know, knock on wood, we’ve been able to do that thus far.

Yeah, smart investing in security early on, and the privacy, as you talked about before, really focusing on the customer owning their data. Those are the two biggest areas I see folks, it kind of bites folks. But also, I think because you’re API first, you’ve prioritized the APIs. I see a lot of companies prioritize mobile apps, the implementations, over the APIs, and the APIs kind of become shadows. So I think that’s one of the benefits of being API first that clearly you’ve identified early on. So how do you feel like, do you feel like you’re innovative and early with your startup, or is there a lot of competition for what you’re doing? Are you at the right time? What’s your feeling on that?

I think, I mean, we were definitely, I think we’re a bit early. There’s a few of other startups trying to do things similar that’s popped up, but you know, for us we’ve just always taken a very measured approach to what we’re doing, a very sticky, making sure that we’re sticking with our first principles, we’re sticking with our north star metrics, and making sure we continue to drive home on those. Because for us a lot of these things are really subjective, because you want to make sure that your customers, you want to make sure that their service is working, they can scale with you, your coverage, you have the most amount of coverage. And so, kind of leaning into what you were talking about before about being API first, we just made sure that we understand that your customers are using you to be able to get their service at the highest amount of deliverability possible, and also make sure that they’re growing in tandem as they’re doing that. And so we’ve kind of just stuck to that. In terms of timing, I think we’re just right, because a bit earlier, a lot of these even banking applications, the whole internet banking is quite new. So when I say new, in the last like eight, you know, seven to nine years. So I think we’re just at the right time, when you have that amount of penetration, you need to actually show that this is something that people want to use at scale.

Yeah, and it sounds like you’re really building this as a product, so you’ve got that feedback loop, it’s got to have that value, that benefit to actually people in their daily worlds, in their businesses, and not just fintech for the sake of fintech. Because I’ve seen a lot of fintech in Europe and US in those early years that you talked about, that’s seven to nine years, and they just didn’t feel like they were open banking because it was cool and trendy. And so having that feedback, that API, a key aspect of API first is having that feedback loop. So you’re building products, not just technical interfaces that seem cool or seem attractive, kind of stuff, I think.

Yeah, when you first start building that, right, you think about it, like, of course inevitably when you first start building you think about what this product is in your mind, right? But if you don’t continuously build that customer feedback loop essentially, you’re building for yourself, you’re not actually building for long-term usage and for actual lasting, you know, eyeballs. So we always make sure that we, of course, you have your roadmap and you understand what it is you’re building, you build that step-by-step process, but you have to be able to allow it to be influenced at least by the feedback loop that you’re getting, to make sure that you’re continuously focusing on the things that people want to use today and the things that are important to their businesses.

Do you feel like, I mean it sounds like you’re following kind of know your customer type things, you’re in tune, you have these feedback loops, but do you feel like you understand what your customers are needing, and what their users are needing, to the point where you’re going to be able to just keep iterating out and bringing the next generation of services to them?

I think so. I mean I think that you get to the point where, one, you’re helping them stabilize and scale existing things they’re using, but then seeing where value-added services come about. One of the coolest things about being this type of company is that you get to have access to the node that you need to build almost anything. Like, data is the key to product generally, in the sense that if I can define this aspect, I can build this tool, I can build a service, I can build this product. So I think that what’s interesting is, a lot of clients figure out, like even we as well, our clients figure out things just based on usage as they grow generally. So like, this thing that they tried, oh, it had this result, okay, what does that mean, okay, is there a product out of here, okay, what question would you need to be able to answer about your customer in order to increase the usage of your customers today, for instance. And then that’s how you start building products out of these conversations and out of these loops. So then you take that and then you look at your roadmap and say, okay, we’re actually thinking about doing this already, but maybe this is more important that we do today, maybe this thing that we wanted to do today we do later, and so on.

It feels like, I would say, one of the hallmarks of, it wasn’t just fintech, it was several waves of tech startups, when you hear the term “data is the new oil,” how important data is, the value of the data was not very creative or imaginative. It was like, straight up just selling the data to someone. Hey, we’ve got all the data, so we’re going to sell it to someone. But what you’re talking about sounds like kind of the next generation, is you have this data, you have this insight and visibility, and it’s not to sell it, it’s to understand and build what’s next and shape it into the next generation products.

Yeah, 100%. I mean, the next, the fourth industrial revolution is all about personalization, AI, understanding. And there’s been a lot of businesses and projects across the world, not even just on the continent, that have been sitting on amounts of their customer data, not doing, not understanding that thing, how do you start serving your customers in a way that they want, more personalized, in tune with what they need, in order to build for them, rather than just building essentially services that you want to build. It’s an understanding of that customer. If you know what type of food they, what restaurants to recommend, you know, like Netflix wins by being able to tell you the next show you want to watch very quickly. And so that’s the kind of thing that we want to enable people to be able to build. Not just build for your customers, but also build something personalized for them, something that they actually want to use.

So one concern I had with the previous incarnations of, you know, what I just described, data as an oil, but a lot of this had hallmarks and feels like earlier waves of industrialization that weren’t very fair and equitable, they were pretty exploitative and extractive in a lot of ways. So do you feel like this approach that you have has the potential to be more fair and equitable when it comes to this next generation of digital resources that define who we are, what our culture and society is about?

A hundred percent. I mean, because this time we’re putting the control in the user’s hands, right? This is now your control of your data and how. So now this is all about making your life easier, your life more personalized, and full access to even revoke this at any time. What’s different is that you’re not taking something without consent, or something that you’re sitting on, that you just have access to. You’re saying, hey, you use this app and you also use this app, you’ve connected your bank here, do you want to share that information here as well, and help you get value from whatever value added service this person wants to give you. So I think that it definitely puts the control into the user’s hands, into their hands, and it lets them know that you’re in control of this, and you’re in control not only of this, but you’re in control of what, where and how it’s shared as well.

Yeah, and that extends not just directly to your payments and your finances, but how you earn that or make that across the gig economy and sharing economy, how you spend it, how you invest it, what you do with it. It gives you more control over it across the board.

Yep, exactly, even more insights for yourself to know how to do that better.

Yeah, yeah. Well I think we, as tech startups, we need to keep investing in educating end users. I’ve long been an advocate of, hey, you should know what APIs are, not that you’re going to build APIs or build an app on top of APIs, it’s kind of like the rest of the banking system, you don’t have to understand SWIFT and all these other things, but you should understand who has access to your bank account, right? You should have some fundamental, and a lot of people look at me like I’m crazy, like, no one’s going to care about APIs, I’m like, well, I mean, no one cares about the electrical lines or the water lines, but when you don’t have water coming out of your tap, or you don’t have electricity out of that plug, you probably care. So I’m a big fan of educating folks about why APIs matter, not just for a specific area like payments, but across the board, that’s how your healthcare data is, it’s all of these things. So, was it pretty easy to convince your investors of the opportunity that exists in Africa, is it pretty clear to them?

I definitely, I think so. I mean, of course, it’s always a little dance you play, so it’s not every investor that gets it. But I think the ones that we definitely wanted to make sure we aligned ourselves with, investors that really shared our thesis, our viewpoint and our understanding on how impactful this is going to be in the continent, not just now, but it’s not even about the value today, it’s about, you know, 10 years from now, how big will financial services be on the continent, and what is going to be that infrastructure that’s powering that. And I think that, once you’re aligned in that way, I think it’s pretty easy at that point.

How close are you to the coding, into the tech, as leadership now? Are you doing less technical things and more businessy things, are you still doing a balance? Where do you find yourself?

Oh man, it depends, I guess it depends on time, and fundraising times it’s probably different, right? But generally I’m still an active coder. I still actively contribute to the code base, and obviously as we grow and solve our people thing, that becomes less and less as time goes by. But I mean, it’s really exciting, it’s always something to build, something to work on. And even in the issues and in the QA and the process of learning, you know, I spend probably four hours of my day on Postman just going through routes and debugging and so on and so forth. So I think I’m still very close to it, but I think that will probably change over time, but I’m still very close.

Yeah, well keep sharing feedback on, I mean one of the things I love about Postman, and I’m trying to keep pushing it, is it’s very much a troubleshooting and debugging in this world of APIs, but how can it help us keep seeing our API infrastructure as it grows, as it scales. Observability is kind of that word that fits that, but it’s a little different, how do you see the pipes, how do you see how they’re working. So if there’s more dashboards or tools or interesting things we can share with you, as knowing Postman, because this is the hardest part for me right now, is I love and breathe and live in Postman, but I’m constantly riding that elevator up to the C-suite to talk to large enterprise organizations, and then I ride the elevator back down, and I have trouble keeping balance between the words I use. And you’re at that sweet spot where I don’t think you’re big enough yet, but you’re starting to have to wrestle with some of that. So if there’s things we can provide that give you more observability into things from what you’re used to, let us know, I’m happy.

Oh definitely, 100%. Yeah, no, but it’s been great so far, even just watching the evolution. I remember when I first started using it versus today, and now we kind of see it span across a lot of even the parts of our business, so even looking at people, recruiting, mock APIs, things like that. So it’s been fun kind of getting into the tooling, but I think there are probably maybe a few things here and there, so I’ll think about it.

Yeah, feel free, feel free. You got it, you got a direct line now that we’ve done. Yeah, some of your time for the show, you got a direct line as part of our feedback loop. But honestly, I mean this show is part of that feedback loop. I will carve up this show into an index and do the transcriptions from it, and then it all kind of goes into a central planning feedback loop as far as how we’re shifting it. Because we’re seeing more roles emerge along the life cycle that are product managers, engineering managers, which is why we kind of started this show, but of course business and technical leadership for startups, and then increasingly for large enterprise, trying to find what makes sense, what words fit with their incentives. So as you expand and grow, please share your thoughts, it’s valuable.

Will do, thanks.

So how has COVID changed your world at all? Has it impacted, were you guys virtual before, has it shifted your reality much?

Funny enough, COVID literally, especially the shutdown happened literally as we closed our first pre-seed round. We had just run into the office, everybody was in the office, and we realized, oh, everybody has to go home, so that’s kind of what happened. But I think that it really kind of helped us. It’s three things that happen, right? COVID had this big shift where it kind of pushed forward and propelled digital transformational technical innovation generally, because people had to realize, I actually physically can’t leave my house and go to the bank and get my statement and take it to this company, so how am I gonna do that today? But then, on the other token, you’re now growing pretty fast, because you have all these people trying to build with your tool, and then you’re trying to essentially support them at the same time, have a loop at the same time, scale at the same time, hire at the same time. So those are kind of the things that happen, but I mean, it’s a good problem to have, I guess. And so I think that’s the second thing. And I think the third thing generally was that it enabled us to really think about not just remote work but distributed work. And why I say distributed, just still feeling like you’re working in a collaborative environment, but people are sitting where they’re sitting. And because we had to think about that early, and we invest a lot in tools and in automations and just generally service and tooling, I think that we’re able to kind of focus on other things that were important rather than scrambling to figure out why our customer feedback loop is not integrated with Slack for instance, or anything like that.

I feel like, as an economy, the healthy vibrant economy of the future is gonna need Okras at the front line with their finger on the pulse of the data, understanding markets, and to be able to innovate out ahead and adjust and kind of be the shock absorbers for not just COVID but anything that’s going to come along. We need that type of innovation and agility and flexibility to make for a healthy economy.

Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah, I think it’s pretty critical. And I think it’s one of the things I’ve seen with regulation in the UK and Europe starting to change that behavior. I wouldn’t say the big banks care enough, but they’re starting to pay attention to more of these mid-market kind of smaller startups who are making change, because there’s opportunity there. But I think also they see it makes for a healthier playing field, a healthier ecosystem.

I don’t know, maybe I’m optimistic with the Barclays of the world, but…

No, I think over time even the Barclays of the world will realize that they have to be able to use the same kind of tools as the fintechs and the startups as well. In order to kind of, now we’re creating, I mean of course in some parts of the world more than others, more like even playing fields, like if you look at Stripe and bigger companies and so on. But I think that generally speaking, every company is a financial services company, every company needs a fintech, and the sooner they realize that the better as well.

Yeah, I’m having conversations with pretty much every major bank right now, and it’s fascinating to see the ones that are just like, all right, we need to figure out this API thing, versus the ones that are like already on an API contract, everything’s API contracts these days, they’re getting it, they’re understanding. And you can really tell the difference who’s going to be around in 10, 20 years and who’s not.

Yeah.

What advice would you have for yourself, because I know you’ve made your rounds in some of these big enterprises, what advice would you give yourself back in the early days before you even started working? Would you still do it and kind of pay your dues and go that route, or would you give yourself advice like, hell no?

Hell no. I think I would still do it, because I think sometimes you got to get a little bit of what you don’t want to know what you do want. And so there might be an allure to working for a big company or so on and so forth, but I definitely think that my work style and my personality just drives better with the startup, in the sense of just like, you know, move fast, iterate quickly, and just try to throw things at the wall, so you know what sticks, and then build a plan around that essentially.

Yeah, I’m with you. That’s why, yeah, I mean I spent, I worked at SAP for a number of years, and I just dreaded those years, those were some unhappy years. But I definitely learned what I don’t like, and it definitely shaped the world that I live in now, which I’m very thankful for, because I get a job basically talking to folks like you on a daily basis, and I get to have great conversations. So, where do you, how do you stay sharp, where do you get your information, how do you stay in tune with what’s happening?

I think I like to consume things, so whether or not I’m consuming it via reading or YouTube or whatnot, I do a lot of, I like to take in holistic news, so just news from every viewpoint to kind of inform myself. And then in terms of staying sharp, even just on the tech, we joke a lot at Okra that we’re like some tool-obsessed people, so we even have like a tool party. And so I’m always just looking at what’s new, what’s getting built, how are people thinking about building it, I like looking through API documentation for fun, and just kind of seeing how people are building things and how they’re making connections, because you get ideas of even how to think about how you’re scaling and how to think about what you’re doing. And good ideas and inspiration can come from any type of company, it doesn’t even have to be the same thing at all.

Yeah, that’s what I really love about the API space, partly because I’m a little ADD, I have a very short attention span, so I can, oh look, environment APIs, payment, healthcare, there’s always something. And then you’re in that nerdy realm like me, reading documentation, you can learn a lot from someone’s portal, their developer portal, on how they do things and how they don’t do things. So I’m on the same page with you.

No, I love it, I love watching what people are building and learning from them.

Me too, me too.

Like, it’s always something where you’re like, wow. Or coming up even with one of the things that’s really cool, like, internally even coming up with things to solve our own problems, right, internally, just to make those things faster, where ordinarily you would think that, oh, you’re building an API and all you’re focusing on every day is building CRUD routes. But no, you’re actually also building the tools and services that you need across your organization. So for myself, it helps me even focus, like, I can work on this and I can work on this, but all of these things you’re doing are still for the greater good, and they’re still pushing towards the same objective. So it’s pretty cool.

Yeah, and that’s kind of where I’ve taken Postman, it has this, we’re an API platform now, you can stitch together using any service that you depend on, because it’s all API driven. And I kind of see, because I’ll be using existing infrastructure like GitHub or Jira’s APIs as part, or AWS API is part of my infrastructure, and then I’ll stitch together with Salesforce and others, but then I’ll have other APIs I’ve got to build and CRUD routes I’ve got to do, and it feels like I’m stitching some sort of fabric or quilt or something of everything, and it gets to a point where it all works together, not always, but most of the time, and it looks beautiful.

So yeah, I think, yeah, no, I was just gonna say, I really love that idea of, one of my favorite things around tools is how tools coexist together, right? So the ability to use this API and then use this one to do this thing to ultimately do this thing, whether or not it’s to solve something as simple as scheduling, right? And not even from a calendar perspective, you know, that’s genius on its own, but even from a perspective of, I want to be able to block time, or have a recurring thing, or automatically intuitively move my, you just see a tool the next day that is essentially solving a specific problem. So I think it’s also cool to see how people are solving the things that are grinding their gears the most, and then throwing that into tooling that, I’m sure, like tooling and services and products and companies that grow, so it’s just the evolution of the problem and the first iteration of the API that doesn’t work is always the first hurdle, but then when you kind of, oh, it’s working a little bit now, and then you kind of move and see how big it can get. I think it’s so exciting, it’s just super exciting.

Yeah, no, and I love these business or real world problems, not only business problems, is what I really love APIs about. So tomorrow one of the episodes that we’re recording is a group in Chicago, they are helping women, primarily women, Black and brown women of a certain part of Chicago, to maximize their worlds using APIs. And a lot of them are like, we’re quitting our jobs because we have kids at home, we have to do something and we still need to make money, so what we’re going to focus on is calendaring. So how do you, with all the meetings, all the class schedules, all the juggling they’re having to do as part of their lives to either just be a parent in today’s world with kids, or try to start a business, or have a side business or a side hustle, how do you maximize calendaring to do what you need to do? And I think that’s a fascinating problem right there.

Yeah, I think that’s definitely fascinating. I mean, that’s the thing, it’s like you can think of any problem you have and find a way to solve it. And I think that, you know, before we moved into trying to solve things with products, and now this ability to solve things with APIs, which is still a product, but just from the enablement aspect, is really cool. As we move, and the API economy is growing worldwide generally, in some places it’s much more further along than others, but I think just generally, once you start enabling, you see multiple things built out of this thing. So like even the idea that you were just mentioning of enabling you to maximize your scheduling, imagine how many different products now come from that, just that general idea.

Yeah, and just an underserved market of needs, it’s like, I just need, I need to know, I need my calendar to reflect across multiple calendars, Outlook, Google, different things, help me prioritize, help me see what matters, help me see what’s my family. There’s a lot of nuance in there that I think we could serve and provide value for, that maybe we don’t see as Google Calendar or some startup that’s dedicated to this.

Yeah, yeah.

So I really like that world, I think the solving real world problems, because I’m getting tired of tech in my older age, I’m much more critical, I want it to help me, it’s got to make me happy, otherwise I’m not, I’m not going to do tech for the sake of tech anymore, because I’ve got to add value in some way.

Yeah, yeah.

So, ending on a personal note, what drives you, motivates you, what keeps you a happy person beyond Okra and APIs and tech?

Oh, I mean, definitely family, friends. I have my son, my husband, so spend as much time as possible, which is limited sometimes. And also what kind of drives me as well is, I think that just generally speaking, I always make the joke that I don’t mind being a robot and kind of seeing how everything unfolds. And I think that just the idea of continuously consuming what’s going on in the world around tech and so on and so forth, those are kind of things that just get me excited. I just love, regardless of even this, just love seeing people build and love seeing people solve real problems. And of course, spending time with friends and family as well, so yeah.

Well, it’s good to hear. I’m in a similar boat. I don’t have a lot of hobbies or creative, I wasn’t really good at anything until I started doing APIs, and all of a sudden I seem to have found something I’m good at and I love doing, so I don’t do a lot else. I mean, I hike with my dog, and my child, she’s grown and in university now, so she doesn’t need me as much as she used to. So I just work, and I love doing this, so I’m right there with you.

Me too, I think that my favorite thing is building, and so regardless of when I was doing this, you’d still see me trying to solve some random problem that I have in the code base as well, so it’s what drives me.

Well, like I said, I think we need more folks like you out at the front lines of the economy, because I think that feedback loop that you all have in place is going to be real key when it comes to meeting the actual needs people have on the ground when it comes to the day-to-day things that matter. So I appreciate you being out there.

Well, thank you so much.

I really appreciate your time today, this has been great, I’m glad we could finally make it happen and make it work. You’re in our contact list, I’ll be reaching out about future episodes and future opportunities, and maybe if we come to your area we can collaborate on some things. But I appreciate it, thank you so much.

Thank you, thanks so much for the time, it’s been excellent, it was a great conversation.

Thanks again to Fara for stopping by. You can find out more about Okra at okra.ng. You can subscribe to the Breaking Changes podcast at postman.com/events/breaking-changes. I’m your host, Kin Lane, and until next time, cheers.