Creating a compelling developer story for your cloud based api final

Creating a Compelling Developer Story for Your Cloud-Based API
Mike Borozdin
DocuSign, Inc. – the Cloud Based eSignature Company

DocuSign’sDev Community Results
Processes about 70% of all the cloud-based eSignature traffic
50% is through API = our API processes more transaction than the rest of the market combined
Developer community of 5033 developers as of 05/03/2011 with about 100+ new development sandboxes requested every month

Creating a Story
Start with a compelling product
Your first API customers
Iterating
Tools and documentation
Personnel
Join communities
Create your own community
Tailor to three different developer groups
Bring the community together

Start with a Compelling Product
DocuSign Story
Industry Precedent
Step 1:Create a compelling product _______
If you don’t build a great product – you will have a tough time with the rest of the steps. In fact, some of them might be detrimental.
Recent History: the iPhone and the iPhone SDK
June 29th, 2007 – the phone is released
March 6th, 2008 – after the product has proven to be a success, Steve Jobs has released the SDK
“We wanted to make it as painless as possible. This is where we felt DocuSign was best for the person doing the signing. The best part is documents could be signed in literally minutes versus months.”
Mike Machado
CRM Manager, Yamaha Commercial Audio
“Using DocuSign has saved Dow AgroSciences considerable administrative time, energy and resources. Our seed retailers no longer have to wait on a cumbersome paper process to obtain a license number for their growers and invoice the seed and traits. And, our growers can execute their agreements quickly and securely.”
Doug Hoberty
OneSource Manager, Dow AgroSciences

Your First API Customers
Who:
Close partners
Big corporate IT
What:
Solve complete problems with your API
Examples:
I want to send you a set of documents for signature, in return I need to get an ID which I can use to track whether or not an “Envelope” of documents has been signed
DocuSign Started in 2003
End user interface
Business cases
First API Customers were in 2006
It was not open
DocuSign created a Professional Services department to help people with the API
Complete business problems were solved and tremendous efficiencies over manual processes were proven

Iterating
Your partners and customers are going to imagine things that you never thought of
Do not have API that doesn’t support versioning like:
http://yourapp.com/api/api.asmx
Version 1.0 of your API is going to get old…. Quickly.
You will always have to support multiple versions, just get ready for it from the beginning

Tools and Documentation
Tools
Code Samples in C#, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python
Code snippets for copy and paste
Diagnostic tools or guidelines (web service tracing, log4j instructions, ruby request/response dump)
Documentation
Both PDF and Online
Searchable
Need to be up to date
Bad documentation turns people off and you won’t be able to complete step #7

Tools and Documentation
www.DocuSign.com/DevCenter

Personnel
1 part – software engineer
1 part – customer service rep
1 part – marketing manager
Look for:
Social engineers
Ex-consultants
Not so good results with:
People who never had hands-on code experience
Anti-social people

Join Communities
General Rules
Go where your developers are
Understand different culture
.NET communities vs. Python communities
Give to the community before you ask for anything
DocuSign Example
Salesforce Cookbook

Create Your Own Community
Create a forum
Recognize top posters
Resolve un-answered questions
Encourage people that e-mail you to use the forum and share knowledge
community.docusign.com

Create Your Own Community
Create a MarketPlace or an App Gallery
Help your developers
Help your customers
Help your sales people
www.DocuSign.com/MarketPlace

Three Different Types of Developers
IT Developer – they are your direct customer
System Integrator – they sell expertise and labor
ISV – they have a piece of software that they want to connect to your API
Different goals
Different appetite for paying for services
Different methods of getting ROI

Bring the Community Together

Questions?
@mikebz
@docusignAPI

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Creating a compelling developer story for your cloud based api final

by Mike Borozdin on May 27, 2011

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Creating a compelling developer story for your cloud based api final — Presentation Transcript