Coast | Waking The Sleeping Giant
Making the hidden powers of APIs clear to everyone.
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Hello everyone 👋,
Today’s edition of The API Economy is brought to you in partnership with Coast.
Coast’s founders, Austin Pager and Spencer Levitt, were gracious enough to help me tell their story in this edition of The API Economy. Coast has built a product that solves the same problems I started The API Economy to explain — showing the world that APIs are the most powerful technology in the world.
Demonstrating an API's value has always been challenging. Most people consider APIs an abstract acronym, historically making API products difficult to sell as they are often understood only by a seasoned few. By providing a side-by-side view of an API's backend workings alongside the user's experience, Coast eliminates the guesswork.
To find out how, let’s explore Coast.
*Disclaimer: This is a paid sponsorship. Find out more about The API Economy’s paid sponsorships here.
APIs run the world
APIs quietly power the modern world, enabling everything from payments to logistics behind the scenes. These invisible bridges between systems have long been the backbone of innovation, even if their impact often goes unnoticed.
From banking to healthcare, APIs form the digital infrastructure behind nearly every modern service. Yet despite their ubiquity, most people still don’t understand what APIs do or why they matter, creating a gap between technical teams and the broader public. This disconnect can slow adoption and obscure value.
In response, forward-thinking companies are now treating APIs not just as hidden backend infrastructure, but as strategic assets that unlock new revenue, partnerships, and product innovation.
The popular API testing platform Postman publishes its State of the API Report annually. When the report started in July 2006, there were fewer than a million API calls. Since then, Postman Collections have grown to more than 121 million.
As the world continues to embrace digital transformation, it has become increasingly clear that APIs are the key to unlocking the full potential of technological innovation.
In this essay, we delve deeper into the world of APIs, exploring their history, impact, and Coast’s pivotal role in shaping the future of digital innovation.
Every company relies on APIs, whether you know it or not
APIs are poised to reshape every industry.
Consider the logistics sector, where real-time data streaming from vehicle fleets has become the new norm. By leveraging APIs, logistics companies can seamlessly integrate their systems with clients, enabling the instantaneous exchange of critical information and the optimization of supply chain operations.
This level of connectivity and collaboration is now essential for companies to remain competitive in a fast-paced, data-driven marketplace.
Similarly, the financial system has become entirely reliant on APIs, with banks, investment firms, and fintech startups alike leveraging these tools to facilitate the secure transfer of funds, the sharing of customer data, and the development of innovative financial products.
This technological paradigm shift extends to some of the biggest and oldest industries in the world. Take Zurich Insurance, for example. Headquartered in Zürich, Switzerland, Zurich Insurance utilizes Coast’s software and is the country's largest insurer. As of 2021, the group was ranked the world's 112th largest public company by Forbes' Global 2000s list, and 94th in Interbrand's top 100 brands.
One might ask, what is a 100-year-old Swiss insurance company doing in the API space? Well, Zurich Insurance builds both internal and external APIs that it needs to showcase to stakeholders and customers.
Yet despite their power, APIs are notoriously difficult to explain, especially to non-technical buyers. Coast helps bridge that gap by turning invisible infrastructure into intuitive, live experiences.
Just as most people now conceptually understand the benefits of SaaS models, the widespread adoption of APIs is poised to become the next major shift in how we think about and interact with technology. Potential API customers no longer want to just hear about an integration's theoretical capabilities. They want to see the software working for them in real time, tailored to their specific needs.
The majority of people who buy tech are often non-technical and need a more engaging way to grasp how APIs solve their specific pain points and unlock new opportunities. In enterprise sales, where an API's value must be showcased to multiple stakeholders, the ability to demonstrate, visualize, and explain that value accessibly can be the difference between a successful sale and a missed opportunity.
When semi-technical or non-technical stakeholders, such as executives, business analysts, or end-users, can comprehend an API's transformative potential, they are better equipped to understand its strategic value and advocate for its adoption within their organizations. In the vast majority of sales, the person signing the contract is not integrating the API; they, too, need to understand the value before making a decision.
Imagine providing a technical demo with live software, complete with a built-in 'cheat sheet' explaining its significance. Coast lets API-first companies deliver interactive demos tailored to each prospect’s use case, making the value instantly clear and accelerating the sales cycle.
Getting every stakeholder on the same page, regardless of their technical capabilities, can lead to more informed decision-making, faster implementation, and greater overall buy-in, ultimately driving the success of any API-first solution.
This shift in mindset extends beyond the traditional customer-vendor relationship. Everyone is a buyer, from the internal stakeholder pitching a new initiative to the product manager seeking funding for a critical project. In these scenarios, the ability to showcase the value of APIs through interactive, personalized demonstrations can be the difference between securing buy-in and facing an uphill battle.
As APIs continue to reshape the digital landscape, the importance of API-specific tools like Coast will only grow. By making these powerful tools accessible and understandable to all, Coast is paving the way for a future where API-driven innovation is not just the domain of the technologically savvy but a universal language.
Once locked in black-box codebases, APIs are now explorable and shareable thanks to tools like Coast.
Life is better by the Coast
Coast began when founders Austin Pager and Spencer Levitt, classmates at Northwestern University, recognized a critical disconnect. Despite experiencing the transformative power of APIs firsthand through countless passion projects, they saw how technical complexities often overwhelmed non-technical stakeholders and potential customers, inundating sales reps and SMEs with endless questions throughout the buying process.
To bridge this gap, Levitt and Pager created Coast, a platform designed to empower API-first companies to capture attention, accelerate sales cycles, and leave a lasting impression through interactive, personalized, and visually stunning API demos.
Y Combinator (YC), a world-renowned startup accelerator and venture capital firm that helps founders in the early stages of their businesses, recognized Coast's potential and dedication by accepting them into the S21 batch. It’s worth noting that YC has a less than 2% acceptance rate, and consistently ranks as the world’s best incubator.
During their time in YC, Levitt and Pager refined their product, validated their market fit, and forged crucial partnerships that would propel Coast to new heights.
After YC, Coast quickly gained traction and has since attracted some of the largest enterprises in the world. FIS (NYSE: FIS), whose APIs help process $50 trillion annually and are used by 95% of the world’s leading banks, trusts Coast to power how they showcase the capabilities of their APIs.
More specifically, FIS's Code Connect platform hosts over 700 APIs for businesses to integrate and leverage products that span all stages of the monetary lifecycle. Coast integrates directly into Code Connect, just as an FIS customer would, to enable different product teams to bring the APIs they sell to life for:
Internal teams to streamline product development.
Banks and external partners for strategic initiatives.
Sales reps to demo the platform throughout the buying process to drive revenue.
For those who attended FIS Emerald, FIS's flagship conference for its customers and partners, Coast was on display on the main stage and at individual booths throughout the conference floor. The Open Access platform is one example of a product that FIS leverages Coast for:
"Agreements are in place with leading data networks including Akoya, Envestnet | Yodlee, MX and Plaid to integrate into FIS’ Open Access platform, an innovative new open banking solution, that enables consumers to securely and seamlessly share their financial information with a greater number of third-party financial apps and services of their choice." (Source)
More FIS teams, such as Modern Banking Platform, Card Suite, Loyalty and Reward Solutions, and Atelio by FIS, are leveraging Coast to showcase the power of their APIs in real-time.
In addition to working with some of the top US banks, credit bureaus, card networks, and other Fortune 500s, Coast also works with leading API-first companies, like Twilio and Plaid, which are largely credited with creating the notion of an API-first company.
Product managers, designers, and even non-technical stakeholders like sales & marketing can now grasp the potential of these tools, leading to more informed decision-making, better-aligned product development, and more effective communication between technical and non-technical teams.
When more people, not just engineers, can understand and act on API-driven ideas, it unlocks better products, faster decisions, and more aligned teams.
The ability to effectively showcase and communicate the power of APIs can be a game-changer for businesses and individuals. When everyone, from executives to end-users, can grasp the potential of these tools, new opportunities for growth, partnership, and integration arise.
APIs are growing (and for good reason)
According to Postman, 91% of developers now use APIs in their work, and 60% say their companies have become more API-driven in the past year.
APIs are no longer optional – they’re central to how modern software gets built.
Why? Because APIs solve real problems out of the box. Developers can plug in a solution, let someone else maintain and scale it, and move on to building what matters next. The less time they spend learning and configuring, the better.
In ‘APIs as ladders’, author Sebastian Bensusan states: “Developers don't want to learn your API, they want to solve a problem and move on. As such, you should try to minimize the amount of learning they have to do.”
That’s why minimizing complexity is critical. Not just in the product but also in the sales process. API buyers don’t want theoretical explanations. They want to see exactly how your API works in their context and with their use case.
Galileo, the infrastructure provider behind fintech leaders like SoFi, understood this firsthand. As their deals grew more complex, so did the pressure to clearly communicate how their platform worked without slowing down engineering teams to build custom demos for every use case.
“We were using different tools, API flows, and mockups. Then we had to manually combine everything for every deal,” said Nick Watson, from Galileo’s SE team. “It was slow and inconsistent.”
That tradeoff wasn’t scalable. Instead of continuing to patch together materials, Galileo turned to Coast.
“The speed was a surprise,” said Michael Grillo, Head of Product Marketing. “You plug in a URL and get something on-brand and interactive immediately. It completely changed how we approach sales enablement.”
With Coast, Galileo’s product teams could generate live, branded demos tailored to each prospect—without engineering lift. Sales engineers reclaimed hours of prep time, champions got reusable assets they could circulate internally, and product marketing could run faster without waiting on design.
"There are seven-figure deals where the Coast demo made the difference,” Grillo said. “It brought clarity to something we’d long struggled to articulate.”
(Quotes provided by the Coast team)
By empowering teams to clearly demonstrate the value of their APIs early and often, Coast helps API-first companies like Galileo move faster, tell a more consistent story, and build trust across every stakeholder in the deal.
Making APIs accessible to all
At the heart of this transformation lies the opportunity to effectively showcase APIs' capabilities to potential customers and stakeholders. As we have explored, traditional methods such as technical documentation and static sales decks often fail to capture the true power and versatility of these tools.
This is where Coast has emerged as a solution to help tell any story for any API.
The broader implications of Coast's success extend far beyond API demos. By making these powerful tools accessible and understandable to a wide range of stakeholders, Coast is paving the way for a future where API-driven innovation is not just the domain of the technologically savvy but a universal language empowering businesses and individuals to unlock new levels of efficiency, collaboration, and growth.
As the API-first economy continues to evolve, embracing innovative tools like Coast will become a critical differentiator in a competitive landscape where showcasing API value can make or break a business.
Not every company will become API-first, but it would be a mistake for companies not to expose their APIs as an alternative revenue stream. The trend is still early, but we can expect to see more API-second and API-third companies over time.
Until our next adventure.
Special thanks to Mama Schroeder for editing this essay (any typos are on her 😊). Also, thank you to Austin, Spencer, and the entire coast team for making this edition of The API Economy possible.
*Disclaimers: The views in this essay are my personal opinions and don’t necessarily represent the views of my employer, those mentioned in this article, the Coast team, or anyone other than myself.
Great article 👏
I suppose some could say the latest Ai Agent craze is just a better marketed API…
…In that the agent allows the user to access an externally stored industry/knowledge database to achieve a goal