I run a Peterborough startup company called qaZING – you might have seen or heard the name around the region in the last couple months. It’s a tech company in the on-demand economy.
Why start a tech company in Peterborough? The last few years have been astounding leaps in the world of collaboration. A few years ago, it would have been nearly impossible to start a tech company in Peterborough, and now it is possible to collaborate with a team of people all over the globe, integrating with leading APIs that allow much quicker and much more efficient innovation.
“API” stands for Application Program Interface (or alternatively Application Programming Interface), and APIs range from relatively simple to very complex. The main idea is that an API connects a platform with services offered through other platforms, setting forth strict inputs and outputs for easy integration.
For example, if I wanted to integrate with a weather API so that my app or my website could display tomorrow’s weather, some possible inputs may be zip code and the forecast date.
A more complex example is a payment processing API that may take many more inputs, such as credit card number, expiration date, name, amount, credit card type, destination of the payment, etc.
An easy way to think of an API is like an agreement. I provide specific information and you provide the information that we agreed upon. And, of course, there are legal agreements, often signed with an e-signature, that govern this electronic interface.
APIs have an extraordinary impact on collaboration in business ecosystems.
Collaboration is traditionally thought of as highly interpersonal, but in the technological ecosystem written and maintained by today’s leading thinkers and programmers, collaboration is also an electronic contract, APIs that pair up leading businesses and enable a much higher level of innovation.
This means that a small business in Peterborough can build a platform that harnesses the power of Google maps, offers payment options through a trustworthy payment processor such as Venmo or Paypal, connects with social media companies, texting gateways, and all of the other exciting APIs that are being invented daily. And as soon as a company is plugged in, it can access leading technologies, and collaboration and innovation can explode! As the CEO of a startup company with limited resources, I have the pleasure of working with developers all over the globe. This of course has its downsides, but in the tech world we live in now, collaboration provides the opportunity to scale businesses at previously unheard of speeds.
Jason Garland is the founder and CEO of qaZING, a Peterborough-based startup.