INTEGRATIONS A crucial part of any SaaS product

Ville Saarinen @vsaarinen Flowdock

The importance of integrations What’s possible with current technologies Marketing with integrations Building a business on integrations

The importance of integrations

Your product isn’t being used in a vacuum Improve product/market fit Focus on one thing Massively increase stickiness

- Your product isn't being used in a vacuum.

- What activity is your product being used for/during?

- Is it part of a process?

- What related needs arise during (or before/after) using your product? Do other tools satisfy these needs?

- What other tools are used during this time (or before/after)?

- Does it make sense to integrate with these other tools?

- It's a way to improve (and validate) product/market fit. If your tool works well with the tools of a market, you're probably in the right market (and you're improving your service).

- FOCUS ON ONE THING. Don't try to solve all of a user's problems – focus on doing one narrow thing extremely well, and integrate with other services to provide these other "features".

- It massively increases stickiness. When many of your tools integrate with a service, you're no longer just replacing one tool when switching

What’s possible with current technologies

Trend: APIs are expected REST + JSON Realtime OAuth

- REST API + JSON. so simple

- times have changed since SOAP/WSDL

- Realtime

- send activity to other services via webhooks

- websockets allow for realtime activities in the UI

- OAuth for authorization/authentication

- well understood/standardized

- allows you to perform actions in other services on a user’s behalf

- Libraries,

- …but are nearly irrelevant nowadays. REST+JSON is so simple

- SDKs have gone defunct

- Example: Flowdock built on top of public API

Marketing with integrations

Both products gain value Co-marketing is obvious Build everything yourself…?

- Both products are more valuable to the user if they integrate

- Also affects product choice: "we'll only consider tools that integrate with X"

- Products that you integrate with often aren't competitors. Users of both products benefit. Co-marketing is obvious

- How many of Flowdock's integrations were built ourselves? ~20%. With a good API, you can outsource a lot of your own work, both marketing and product development. Of course, this requires users...

- Flowdock started by building most crucial integrations (including email, RSS), then API

Building a business on integrations

Examples Premium integrations? Can you integrate too deeply?

- Companies that only do integrations: ifttt, zapier, cloudpipes, pipethru, opshub, tasktop

- Some businesses are built on top of the API of one product: Waffle.io, Gitter

- business model: premium integrations?

- Can you integrate "too much"?

The importance of integrations What’s possible with current technologies Marketing with integrations Building a business on integrations

INTEGRATIONS A crucial part of any SaaS product

Ville Saarinen @vsaarinen Flowdock