Notes
Make the API boring
Tobiloba Odejinmi · 18 Nov 2023 · 6 min · 167 words
Direct answer
Banks will use you if they can plug in before lunch. At Zeeh, adoption grew 890% in nine months because companies could connect in a day, not a quarter. Boring APIs win. Clever ones wait for a champion who never gets budget.
- Time-to-first-call is the product.
- 390+ companies do not integrate because of a keynote.
- The same rule applies when you attach an AI employee to those APIs.
- If setup takes a project plan, you still have work to do.
Before lunch
I ran a team of eight at Zeeh Africa. The work that paid off was not a new metaphor for banking. It was making identity and account data something another team could call without a three-week workshop.
When I talk about AI employees now, I use the same test. If it needs a new login and a new religion, it will die in procurement.
Questions people ask
What grew at Zeeh?
Adoption grew 890% in nine months. Banks and lenders plugged in through APIs used by 390+ companies.
Written by
Tobiloba Odejinmi
Head of Engineering at 10mg Health. I have run engineering at Zeeh Africa and sold Insurpass and Shopl. I still write the code. If you have one process that still runs on people copying things, we can look at it in thirty minutes.
