“Submit and Forget” is Killing Your API Business

99.9% of businesses in the U.S. are small businesses. Since the late 1990s, they have accounted for between 43.5% and 50.7% of the United States’ gross domestic output (GDP)—trillions of dollars of economic activity. [1]
In Europe, SMEs make up 99% of all businesses and are the backbone of the European economy. [2]

Likewise, in the API world, a significant part of the API economy is driven by SMEs. Thousands of smaller API products are being used by millions of developers around the globe.

Yet, the current SME-driven API economy is still in its early stage.

"How so?" one might ask, “It’s been more than 15 years since API marketplaces emerged to democratize API product monetization.”

True. And yet, after all these years, I’d argue this is still just the beginning.

The “Submit and Forget” Trap

API marketplaces made it simple for small teams and solo developers to monetize their skills: publish an API, and payments are handled for you. But they also fostered a damaging mindset: “submit and forget.”

“Submit and forget” means developers ship an API, submit it to a marketplace, and then assume the catalog will take care of everything — visibility, adoption, revenue.

But this is no different from building a startup, listing it in an app store that takes 20–30% of your revenue, and walking away, hoping downloads will magically happen.

Most startups that try this strategy fail. And so do most APIs.

The harsh reality: it’s not enough to build a product. You also need to market it, sell it, and grow it.

That means outreach, demos, writing, networking — things many developers underestimate but are essential for success.

The First Wave

The first wave of “APIs as products” was driven by software engineers. It makes sense: backend developers have been building APIs for decades, so when marketplaces arrived, they were natural early adopters.

But marketplaces stripped away key ways to differentiate:

1. Documentation: auto-generated by the marketplace, identical for everyone.
2. Developer Experience: defined by the marketplace, the same across competitors.
3. Positioning: your API sits beside hundreds of others, many of questionable quality.
4. Visibility: ranking is controlled by opaque algorithms you can’t influence.
5. Pricing: often constrained to rigid pre-defined tiers.
6. Marketing levers: almost nonexistent, unlike the open web where you can build SEO, publish content, and earn backlinks.

What’s left? Competing on features and price alone. But if features and price were all that mattered, the cheapest, most feature-rich API would always win — which we know isn’t true.

Developers keep polishing the product when what’s really missing is awareness. At some point, coding less and marketing more is the only path forward.

This requires a shift in mindset: treating an API not as a side project, but as a startup.

The Second Wave

The first wave of API-first was driven by developers. The second, much bigger wave, must be driven by entrepreneurs.

APIs are products. API-first startups face the same challenges as any SaaS startup: finding a market fit, building awareness, delivering great user experience, iterating quickly, and pivoting when needed.

Seen in this light, the early API marketplaces, while useful, have also been harmful. They encouraged developers to treat APIs as passive revenue streams rather than businesses that require active growth.

The Opportunity

And yet, this is where the opportunity lies.

For those who have already learned — sometimes painfully — that APIs are products, not side projects, the playing field is wide open. The earlier you start building your brand and cultivating direct relationships with your customers, the further ahead you’ll be when competitors finally catch up.

Because here’s the truth: writing code is the easy part.
Building an API business means much more — marketing, customer communication, onboarding, payments, support.

When I’m asked whether our product can help generate leads or do marketing, my answer is this: no tool will do the hard work of entrepreneurship for you. But what the right platform can do is give you the foundation: your own brand, your own portal, direct access to your users, and the ability to control the entire customer experience.

“Submit and forget” won’t build your API business. Treating your API like a startup will.

[1] https://www.uschamber.com/small-business/small-business-data-center

[2] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/document/download/b7d8f71f-4784-4537-8ecf-7f4b53d5fe24_en?filename=Annual%20Report%20on%20European%20SMEs%202023_FINAL.pdf