WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:00.049 --> 00:00:00.619 Mike Bifulco: Hi friends. 00:00:00.649 --> 00:00:01.460 Welcome back to API. 00:00:01.460 --> 00:00:03.350 As you won't hate, this is Mike, your co. 00:00:04.879 --> 00:00:08.449 For this episode, I'm chatting with Gil , who is the co-founder of merge. 00:00:08.482 --> 00:00:12.190 Him and I had a great time talking about what he's been building with his team 00:00:12.190 --> 00:00:15.970 at merge, what it's like to grow an API centric product to the challenges 00:00:15.970 --> 00:00:19.219 inherent in that some of the really cool learnings that his team has come 00:00:19.219 --> 00:00:22.189 across when they've been building their product and what it's like to 00:00:22.189 --> 00:00:26.072 grow an API centric product especially one that was born during the pandemic. 00:00:26.972 --> 00:00:27.902 I know it was a great discussion. 00:00:27.902 --> 00:00:28.734 I hope you enjoy it. 00:00:28.753 --> 00:00:32.323 Please check out the interview, send me any feedback you've got at Reverend Mike 00:00:32.323 --> 00:00:34.513 on Twitter or at API and you won't hate. 00:00:34.923 --> 00:00:37.772 For our next episode, I believe we'll be back with Phil and Matt 00:00:37.772 --> 00:00:40.712 and myself, chatting about APIs and catching up on some of the news 00:00:40.712 --> 00:00:42.722 and latest goings on in the world 00:00:43.176 --> 00:00:46.086 in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this interview with Gil. 00:00:46.135 --> 00:00:49.984 It was a fantastic discussion and really think he's on something exciting there. 00:00:49.984 --> 00:00:53.226 Love to see people in the API universe, building interesting 00:00:53.226 --> 00:00:57.396 products and sort of pushing the limits of what's been done before. 00:00:57.666 --> 00:01:00.283 And especially when it makes all of our lives easier products like that, 00:01:00.283 --> 00:01:01.573 really trying to sing their own tune. 00:01:01.993 --> 00:01:02.263 Yeah. 00:01:02.293 --> 00:01:05.867 And so before we get off to the interview here's a quick message from our sponsors. 00:01:05.908 --> 00:01:08.638 Thanks so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed the interview. 00:02:40.914 --> 00:02:41.214 All right. 00:02:41.214 --> 00:02:43.704 And I'm here with Gil five from merge, Gail. 00:02:43.704 --> 00:02:44.394 How are you doing today? 00:02:44.974 --> 00:02:45.664 Gil Feig: I'm great. 00:02:45.664 --> 00:02:46.024 How are you doing? 00:02:46.704 --> 00:02:47.574 Mike Bifulco: I'm doing really good. 00:02:47.604 --> 00:02:48.084 Thanks. 00:02:48.114 --> 00:02:48.324 Yeah. 00:02:48.324 --> 00:02:52.044 So I appreciate you taking the time to chat with us or wanted to talk a little 00:02:52.044 --> 00:02:56.094 bit about you and merging your story and how all that applies to API APIs and 00:02:56.186 --> 00:02:57.557 the, the world you're kind of living in. 00:02:57.590 --> 00:03:01.032 And so maybe we can start with, a bit about yourself your background, perhaps, 00:03:01.032 --> 00:03:02.322 and how you got to where you are today. 00:03:03.107 --> 00:03:04.307 Gil Feig: Yeah, absolutely. 00:03:04.307 --> 00:03:05.190 So I'm Gil. 00:03:05.190 --> 00:03:07.704 I am a software engineer through and through. 00:03:07.704 --> 00:03:11.124 I've been been, so since I was pretty young, I had a computer in my room 00:03:11.124 --> 00:03:14.814 and started coding, but got serious about it in college, made her majored 00:03:14.814 --> 00:03:18.077 in computer science and graduated and went straight into software. 00:03:18.077 --> 00:03:19.487 So I worked at LinkedIn for a few years. 00:03:20.012 --> 00:03:20.912 Then Wealthfront. 00:03:21.022 --> 00:03:23.852 And then finally I joined a startup called canvas now called 00:03:23.882 --> 00:03:25.982 untapped, which is recruiting. 00:03:26.042 --> 00:03:28.918 And while I was there had to build a ton of integrations with 00:03:28.918 --> 00:03:30.748 different applicant tracking systems. 00:03:30.769 --> 00:03:32.812 And it was one after the next, it was an insane amount of work. 00:03:32.812 --> 00:03:34.702 We first built greenhouse then lever. 00:03:34.769 --> 00:03:38.191 Then we had to build Workday and in order to close new customers, we had to build 00:03:38.191 --> 00:03:41.521 the ATS is that they were using because we needed to be able to interact with 00:03:41.521 --> 00:03:43.601 whatever data they had on their end. 00:03:43.606 --> 00:03:46.246 And my co-founder who I, who I actually met way back in college. 00:03:47.306 --> 00:03:50.186 At the same time she had gone into finance for a while, ended 00:03:50.186 --> 00:03:52.076 up at a startup as chief of staff. 00:03:52.076 --> 00:03:55.256 And there, she was building out a lot of different integrations 00:03:55.256 --> 00:03:58.076 with ticketing systems and they ran into the exact same problem. 00:03:58.106 --> 00:04:00.956 They had to build it every single integration with every single 00:04:00.956 --> 00:04:03.056 ticketing system, depending on what their customer was on. 00:04:03.296 --> 00:04:05.386 So we noticed this, this very joint problem. 00:04:05.986 --> 00:04:08.776 B2B companies when they want to integrate with other platforms, 00:04:08.776 --> 00:04:12.196 they have to integrate with all the competitors that that space. 00:04:12.466 --> 00:04:16.096 And that's ultimately how we came upon the idea of merge, where we build unified 00:04:16.096 --> 00:04:20.936 API APIs or one API to integrate with all the competitors in, in each vertical. 00:04:22.256 --> 00:04:22.886 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, Got it. 00:04:22.916 --> 00:04:23.246 Okay. 00:04:23.246 --> 00:04:26.863 So it sounds like you were living through the pain of something like 00:04:26.983 --> 00:04:29.903 many startup founders do and kind of saw that pain as an opportunity. 00:04:29.951 --> 00:04:31.061 So how long ago was that? 00:04:31.061 --> 00:04:32.141 When, when did you found merge? 00:04:32.731 --> 00:04:35.131 Gil Feig: Yeah, we started murders right at the beginning of the pandemic. 00:04:35.131 --> 00:04:38.551 So it was around June of 2020. 00:04:39.121 --> 00:04:39.481 Wow. 00:04:39.541 --> 00:04:40.861 Yeah, dove right into the deep end. 00:04:40.861 --> 00:04:41.131 Huh? 00:04:41.921 --> 00:04:43.661 Mike Bifulco: We did we, I mean, what better time? 00:04:43.661 --> 00:04:46.541 The opportunity costs of starting a company then was you either 00:04:46.541 --> 00:04:49.031 sit there in your room and do nothing or you start a company. 00:04:49.031 --> 00:04:49.151 So. 00:04:49.661 --> 00:04:50.171 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:04:50.201 --> 00:04:50.501 Okay. 00:04:50.501 --> 00:04:50.877 So. 00:04:50.915 --> 00:04:52.565 That, that's how you got to merge. 00:04:52.577 --> 00:04:55.508 And you kind of said it already, but what's maybe the value proposition 00:04:55.508 --> 00:04:58.388 or the elevator pitch for why someone would want to use merge. 00:04:58.878 --> 00:04:59.688 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:04:59.688 --> 00:05:03.558 So when, when you're starting a company and you know, you, you know that you 00:05:03.558 --> 00:05:07.188 need to be data rich, I would say most startups, these days have some sort of 00:05:07.188 --> 00:05:08.713 data that they need to interact with. 00:05:08.741 --> 00:05:10.991 And, and even existing companies, large companies we sell to as. 00:05:11.058 --> 00:05:12.390 Basically come up with these product ideas. 00:05:12.390 --> 00:05:15.450 Like we want to build X, Y, and Z, but we need to pull in our 00:05:15.450 --> 00:05:17.520 customer's data from their HR system. 00:05:17.520 --> 00:05:20.460 Let's say we need to pull up all of their employees and we need to 00:05:20.460 --> 00:05:21.930 pull in all of their job titles. 00:05:21.930 --> 00:05:25.860 For example, the, the current approach is all right, well, we need to go ask 00:05:25.860 --> 00:05:27.540 our customers, which HR platforms. 00:05:28.250 --> 00:05:31.370 We're going to stack rank them based on maybe contract value, maybe which 00:05:31.370 --> 00:05:33.110 one the most customers are using. 00:05:33.320 --> 00:05:35.480 And we'll just start tackling them one by one in that order. 00:05:35.630 --> 00:05:38.360 But building them out is not just a simple fee, right? 00:05:38.380 --> 00:05:41.090 It could take three to six months to build out one integration. 00:05:41.330 --> 00:05:44.510 Then you have three to six months of long tail follow-ups and fixes, as 00:05:44.510 --> 00:05:47.150 your devs are finding edge cases or things you just couldn't have predicted 00:05:47.150 --> 00:05:50.720 because you have customers who have set up their HR system in some custom way 00:05:50.780 --> 00:05:52.880 that affects how the API returns data. 00:05:53.360 --> 00:05:55.490 So you're basically assigning, you know, multiple. 00:05:56.640 --> 00:05:59.490 Six months or more, plus you have your support teams involved. 00:05:59.610 --> 00:06:02.280 It's just a whole company, problem, partnerships, everything. 00:06:02.347 --> 00:06:05.676 So instead you can either do that go one by one or instead you can choose 00:06:05.676 --> 00:06:09.846 marriage integrate just once with us, we offer for one of our categories, HR 00:06:09.846 --> 00:06:13.737 and payroll, we offer 35 integrations and we're constantly adding new ones. 00:06:13.737 --> 00:06:16.204 Once you build that out, once you don't have to do any extra work, 00:06:16.414 --> 00:06:19.174 ask, merge to build one out, if one's missing and we'll do it. 00:06:19.414 --> 00:06:20.974 And it's just available to your. 00:06:22.034 --> 00:06:22.484 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:06:22.484 --> 00:06:22.754 Yeah. 00:06:22.754 --> 00:06:24.980 So that, that seems like a pretty easy call, right? 00:06:24.980 --> 00:06:27.920 When the alternative is go ask one of your developers to become an expert 00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:31.550 on someone else's product for a little while or long enough to be dangerous, 00:06:31.550 --> 00:06:34.730 or maybe not even an expert, but to just go try their best to figure it out. 00:06:34.767 --> 00:06:37.647 And then maybe not have the time later on to go keep up with changes. 00:06:38.642 --> 00:06:41.737 Oh, when things break to go and update the, the implementation and 00:06:41.767 --> 00:06:42.997 have to worry about those details. 00:06:42.997 --> 00:06:44.502 So you mentioned one of your, your. 00:06:44.502 --> 00:06:47.790 verticals and it sounds like you've got a few verticals that merged focuses on. 00:06:47.830 --> 00:06:50.080 Can you, can you talk a little bit about those and maybe how you chose them? 00:06:50.695 --> 00:06:51.055 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:06:51.055 --> 00:06:51.385 Sure. 00:06:51.385 --> 00:06:55.045 So we first started with recruiting, which is ATS or applicant tracking 00:06:55.045 --> 00:06:56.995 systems and HR and payroll. 00:06:57.145 --> 00:06:59.785 Those were our two categories that, that kind of launched HR and 00:06:59.785 --> 00:07:01.345 payroll kind of being one joint one. 00:07:01.465 --> 00:07:04.165 So it's HR payroll, and then ATS, the reason we chose those. 00:07:05.115 --> 00:07:06.375 We were familiar with ATS. 00:07:06.375 --> 00:07:09.525 It's something I had built out extensively before ATS also comes 00:07:09.525 --> 00:07:13.155 with a lot of customizability and a lot of variation between platforms. 00:07:13.425 --> 00:07:16.275 So it was a good way for us to just start out building a really robust 00:07:16.275 --> 00:07:19.275 system that we knew would extend to simpler verticals in the future. 00:07:19.342 --> 00:07:23.524 So it was I would say it was a bit bold to start with, but ultimately it's proven 00:07:23.554 --> 00:07:26.392 to be really great because we've been able to expand very quickly after that. 00:07:26.408 --> 00:07:27.908 So after that we launched accounting. 00:07:27.908 --> 00:07:30.098 So those are ERP systems, things like. 00:07:31.218 --> 00:07:32.672 NetSuite and QuickBooks. 00:07:32.672 --> 00:07:34.262 And then after that we did ticketing. 00:07:34.262 --> 00:07:38.012 So JIRA sauna, that's a mix of ticketing system. 00:07:38.022 --> 00:07:42.192 So JIRA, sauna, Trello, those sorts of things, but then also help desk. 00:07:42.192 --> 00:07:43.784 And then we also have a new one. 00:07:43.784 --> 00:07:45.044 We just launched was just CRM. 00:07:45.044 --> 00:07:46.094 So Salesforce hubs. 00:07:47.069 --> 00:07:47.279 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:07:47.309 --> 00:07:47.639 Wow. 00:07:47.669 --> 00:07:51.171 All things that are in their own way, very, very customizable and a 00:07:51.201 --> 00:07:54.501 pretty significant problem to approach from a development standpoint. 00:07:54.711 --> 00:07:57.411 I think maybe the only way you could have taken a harder route in would 00:07:57.411 --> 00:07:59.671 have been to start with something like electric health records. 00:07:59.717 --> 00:08:02.717 But it sounds like you went with a good challenge to start, and 00:08:02.717 --> 00:08:04.577 it's cool to see that you've found some traction and whatnot. 00:08:04.957 --> 00:08:07.027 So for the API, you won't hate audience. 00:08:07.027 --> 00:08:09.847 One of the questions that I like to ask, because people invariably want to 00:08:09.847 --> 00:08:12.520 know is can you tell us a little bit about what you built and merge with? 00:08:12.588 --> 00:08:15.150 Maybe languages, architecture approaches, things like that. 00:08:15.750 --> 00:08:16.500 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:08:16.500 --> 00:08:20.850 So I think for us choice of stack was, was more about speed to market. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:21.930 How quickly can we move? 00:08:22.033 --> 00:08:24.523 What is something that a lot of people are going to know coming in or 00:08:24.523 --> 00:08:27.779 something that people can easily learn as opposed to going for something that 00:08:27.779 --> 00:08:29.628 is the most optimized, fast language? 00:08:29.658 --> 00:08:33.648 So naturally we chose Python, which I think as we grow now, it is a bit 00:08:33.648 --> 00:08:36.198 of a slow language, but again, it lets us move incredibly quickly. 00:08:36.258 --> 00:08:40.008 We've adapted, we use a Django backend and we've added typing since. 00:08:40.008 --> 00:08:42.078 So, you know, we, we run into fewer issues there. 00:08:42.119 --> 00:08:43.846 Then on the front end, we're we're fully react. 00:08:43.996 --> 00:08:45.466 We have a pretty complex front end. 00:08:45.483 --> 00:08:48.380 I would say it's actually surprisingly for an API based startup, we probably 00:08:48.380 --> 00:08:53.060 have a more complex front end than most even non API based startups. 00:08:53.124 --> 00:08:55.494 So yeah, that's, that's sort of our most common. 00:08:56.424 --> 00:08:56.814 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:08:56.844 --> 00:08:57.144 Got it. 00:08:57.144 --> 00:09:01.644 And So on the other side of that, for your customers who are consuming services 00:09:01.644 --> 00:09:04.424 through merge, it looks like you ship a few different client libraries and, 00:09:04.424 --> 00:09:05.784 and a couple of different languages. 00:09:05.808 --> 00:09:07.021 Which of those do you support them? 00:09:07.586 --> 00:09:07.856 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:09:07.856 --> 00:09:10.796 So what we did early on was was basically, we need to be able 00:09:10.796 --> 00:09:11.816 to move incredibly quickly. 00:09:11.816 --> 00:09:13.586 Everything we've done is about how much we can automate. 00:09:14.111 --> 00:09:18.251 And so we're using open API for our APIs to document them. 00:09:18.318 --> 00:09:21.484 I'm sure most listeners here know this, but a sort of similar to 00:09:21.484 --> 00:09:24.514 swagger or any model Jen that you have at had a lot of bigger 00:09:24.514 --> 00:09:25.714 companies where they build in house. 00:09:25.714 --> 00:09:27.214 But we use open API. 00:09:27.634 --> 00:09:32.284 Our open API spec itself is auto-generated using something called Django spectacular. 00:09:32.344 --> 00:09:35.824 So it looks at our end points themselves, and then it generates our spec. 00:09:36.004 --> 00:09:40.864 And then our spec is used by we, we sponsor and we use open API general. 00:09:41.424 --> 00:09:44.214 Which can generate the client libraries or the SDKs. 00:09:45.024 --> 00:09:45.954 They're not perfect. 00:09:45.954 --> 00:09:46.794 Always, I would say. 00:09:46.794 --> 00:09:49.584 And so we we've started to fork those templates a bit to customize 00:09:49.584 --> 00:09:51.714 them and support some of the things that we need, but overall 00:09:51.714 --> 00:09:52.704 it's helped us move incredibly. 00:09:53.764 --> 00:09:54.214 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:09:54.244 --> 00:09:54.604 Yeah. 00:09:54.634 --> 00:09:57.984 That's probably the sign of a growing organization that has, has you know, 00:09:57.984 --> 00:10:00.014 multi-variable requirements to fulfill. 00:10:00.014 --> 00:10:03.224 But also one of those things where suddenly you don't have to go hire a 00:10:03.404 --> 00:10:06.734 Python developer and a Ruby developer and a Java guy and somebody who can 00:10:06.734 --> 00:10:09.794 do C plus plus and all these other things for people who want to consume 00:10:09.794 --> 00:10:12.781 in every flavor under the sun open API is a good way to scale that stuff out. 00:10:12.781 --> 00:10:13.471 That's really cool. 00:10:13.791 --> 00:10:14.811 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it's been great. 00:10:14.811 --> 00:10:17.661 And I think, you know, there's, there's obviously some, some elements of it. 00:10:17.661 --> 00:10:21.561 Like when, when you stretch open API to its max, or when you stretch in general, 00:10:21.561 --> 00:10:25.971 like the rest spec to its max, for example, we support the expand parameter, 00:10:25.971 --> 00:10:30.021 which is a common rest, you know, sort of thing where, where we have certain 00:10:30.021 --> 00:10:31.781 foreign keys relations that come back as. 00:10:32.521 --> 00:10:36.841 But if in the request to our API, you say expand, and then that field name, it 00:10:36.841 --> 00:10:40.942 comes back as a fully unwrapped object, as opposed to the ID the generators 00:10:41.002 --> 00:10:45.502 being able to in the SDK say the type of this is either a string or an object, 00:10:45.502 --> 00:10:47.062 depending on how that request went out. 00:10:47.212 --> 00:10:48.352 They're not so great for that. 00:10:48.434 --> 00:10:49.904 So those are some of the things we've had to adapt. 00:10:49.934 --> 00:10:51.614 We run into a lot of issues as you get more advanced. 00:10:52.719 --> 00:10:53.109 Gil Feig: sure. 00:10:53.139 --> 00:10:53.559 Yeah. 00:10:53.799 --> 00:10:57.491 I'd imagine as you get clients using your tools that are running 00:10:57.491 --> 00:11:00.221 more sophisticated organizations, they want more of those things too. 00:11:00.221 --> 00:11:04.020 And you kind of stress test those those, you know, little edge cases of the API to. 00:11:04.465 --> 00:11:05.305 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, exactly. 00:11:05.305 --> 00:11:08.335 But when you have, you know, when you have 12 different languages 00:11:08.335 --> 00:11:12.025 across five different API APIs, that 60 repos, it can be pretty hard to 00:11:12.025 --> 00:11:14.065 stay on top of with a lean dev team. 00:11:14.245 --> 00:11:14.455 So. 00:11:14.560 --> 00:11:15.400 Gil Feig: Yeah, Yeah. 00:11:15.430 --> 00:11:15.850 To that end. 00:11:15.850 --> 00:11:17.110 How, how big is your team right now? 00:11:17.720 --> 00:11:17.960 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:11:17.960 --> 00:11:20.570 So we are currently a total of 40 people. 00:11:20.602 --> 00:11:24.179 We have about 12 engineers full time, and then we have five people 00:11:24.179 --> 00:11:27.749 focused fully on building new integrations, using sort of a lot of 00:11:27.749 --> 00:11:29.279 the internal tooling that we've built. 00:11:29.401 --> 00:11:30.211 Gil Feig: Yeah, got it. 00:11:30.241 --> 00:11:30.661 Got it. 00:11:30.691 --> 00:11:31.612 so okay. 00:11:31.892 --> 00:11:34.862 That's, that's actually a pretty sizable team and it makes sense. 00:11:34.862 --> 00:11:37.802 Given the number of integrations you've got, like, I'd imagine you'd have to 00:11:37.802 --> 00:11:40.772 have a pretty, pretty solid standing army to just to build out new integrations, 00:11:40.772 --> 00:11:42.572 let alone keeping up with the old ones. 00:11:43.737 --> 00:11:46.707 When we're talking about the services that you integrate with, I know you 00:11:46.707 --> 00:11:49.797 mentioned that you started with sort of the applicant tracking stuff first. 00:11:49.820 --> 00:11:53.360 How did you prioritize the, even the first API that you chose to integrate with 00:11:53.960 --> 00:11:56.690 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, so we, we totally focus on market share here. 00:11:56.795 --> 00:11:59.345 We, we can obviously try to build ones that we want to build, but the 00:11:59.345 --> 00:12:00.935 most important is what people want. 00:12:01.017 --> 00:12:02.157 So with ATS, there's. 00:12:02.712 --> 00:12:06.012 Certain, I would say like looking at different market sectors, 00:12:06.012 --> 00:12:07.152 there's there's dominant platform. 00:12:07.162 --> 00:12:09.492 So in ATS you have greenhouse and lever that are really 00:12:09.492 --> 00:12:10.782 common among tech companies. 00:12:10.838 --> 00:12:12.655 But then we start selling to tech companies, right? 00:12:12.655 --> 00:12:16.135 So we might sell to a company that helps you analyze that the diversity 00:12:16.135 --> 00:12:19.525 of your recruitment funnel and that company is selling to companies we've 00:12:19.525 --> 00:12:23.305 never heard of, you know, so maybe some oil company in Texas, or maybe they're 00:12:23.305 --> 00:12:26.635 selling to taco bell of kid of Ohio. 00:12:26.635 --> 00:12:27.115 Right, right. 00:12:27.570 --> 00:12:30.480 You're now integrating with, with, you know, greenhouse and lever 00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:31.740 are relevant to those people. 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:35.190 It's, it's Oracle Taleo, it's SAP's recruitment platforms. 00:12:35.190 --> 00:12:38.340 And so we've really had to sort of focus on what our customers are asking 00:12:38.340 --> 00:12:41.400 for that being said, building new integrations doesn't slow us down 00:12:41.400 --> 00:12:45.000 because we spent our first six to eight months building out that infrastructure 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:46.710 to be able to build new integrations. 00:12:46.920 --> 00:12:50.010 So it's more actually the sort of maintenance or dealing with edge cases, 00:12:50.160 --> 00:12:51.480 as opposed to the initial build out. 00:12:51.480 --> 00:12:52.200 That takes much time. 00:12:53.200 --> 00:12:53.620 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:12:53.650 --> 00:12:54.100 Okay. 00:12:54.130 --> 00:12:54.560 Okay. 00:12:54.576 --> 00:12:57.724 You said something earlier that, that I kind of grazed over pretty 00:12:57.724 --> 00:13:00.094 quickly, but it's, it may be very interesting thing about the way it 00:13:00.104 --> 00:13:01.283 sounds like you run the company. 00:13:01.288 --> 00:13:03.358 How are you discovering what your customer is? 00:13:03.710 --> 00:13:05.471 How, how are you picking those next integrations? 00:13:05.501 --> 00:13:08.741 Like, is there a strategy for asking for feedback on those things or is it 00:13:08.741 --> 00:13:12.006 something you're discovering through maybe the sales process or, or I don't know, 00:13:12.006 --> 00:13:13.626 help desk ticketing, something like that. 00:13:14.056 --> 00:13:14.896 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:13:14.896 --> 00:13:19.426 So essentially with all of our, all over our marketing pages, our landing page. 00:13:20.031 --> 00:13:21.561 We show which integrations we support. 00:13:21.561 --> 00:13:23.811 And whenever we do, there's always a button next to them that says 00:13:23.811 --> 00:13:28.101 request new integration on top of that on our two premium plans or 00:13:28.101 --> 00:13:31.161 two plans that people are committing to annually, we include building 00:13:31.161 --> 00:13:32.691 new integrations at no extra cost. 00:13:32.691 --> 00:13:35.841 So we just say, get us an API key from a customer or a, you know, 00:13:35.841 --> 00:13:37.341 a sandbox key from a customer. 00:13:37.431 --> 00:13:39.561 We're happy to go build that out on your behalf. 00:13:39.651 --> 00:13:43.911 And so people can sign with merge knowing that any platform that they need, as long 00:13:43.911 --> 00:13:47.571 as that bot form has an API, it's going to be supported and basically say mergers. 00:13:47.571 --> 00:13:49.221 Now our integrations team offloaded. 00:13:50.156 --> 00:13:51.896 Gil Feig: Yeah, that's ambitious. 00:13:51.926 --> 00:13:52.946 That is quite the strategy. 00:13:52.946 --> 00:13:53.832 That's very cool. 00:13:53.833 --> 00:13:56.343 Do you ever find, you're asked to integrate with something that 00:13:56.343 --> 00:13:59.403 is just not ready for the kind of integration you're looking for? 00:14:00.193 --> 00:14:00.553 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:14:00.553 --> 00:14:03.373 So there's, there's a few different cases that happens in number one 00:14:03.373 --> 00:14:06.343 is they don't have an API there there's a lot of value in that. 00:14:06.343 --> 00:14:09.073 And we do have some ways of like, all right, we can try to integrate 00:14:09.073 --> 00:14:10.483 with reports as a service. 00:14:10.566 --> 00:14:13.966 And we, we do support doing that, but some really don't have an API. 00:14:13.966 --> 00:14:15.976 And if there's something that no one's really requesting, we're just 00:14:15.976 --> 00:14:17.146 not gonna, we're not gonna do it. 00:14:17.181 --> 00:14:19.908 Other ones we've been asked to actually help customers or help 00:14:19.908 --> 00:14:21.738 companies design their APIs. 00:14:21.918 --> 00:14:24.288 So we'll have, we'll have a customer who's pioneering, let's 00:14:24.288 --> 00:14:25.998 say some new HR platform or some. 00:14:26.898 --> 00:14:28.368 Relatively new HR platform. 00:14:28.368 --> 00:14:31.758 And they're hounding that HR platform saying, get, we need an API. 00:14:31.758 --> 00:14:32.808 We want to pull our data out. 00:14:32.928 --> 00:14:35.328 That HR platform, sometimes they'll connect them to us and 00:14:35.328 --> 00:14:37.408 we'll help them design and figure out what it should look like. 00:14:37.429 --> 00:14:40.119 And then lastly, you do have ones that are missing core functionality. 00:14:40.539 --> 00:14:42.129 So we also work with platforms on that. 00:14:42.129 --> 00:14:43.509 We integrated with an ATS. 00:14:43.576 --> 00:14:46.855 Not to name names, but we, we didn't agree with one recently that exposed a lot of 00:14:46.855 --> 00:14:51.085 data, but was missing just key candidate and application data and pulling jobs is 00:14:51.085 --> 00:14:54.535 interesting, but most companies need to know who's actually applying for the jobs. 00:14:54.655 --> 00:14:55.975 So working with them to add that from. 00:14:57.080 --> 00:14:58.370 Gil Feig: Yeah, I don't really cool. 00:14:58.670 --> 00:15:02.507 Do you provide a backlog of, of integrators that you're 00:15:02.867 --> 00:15:04.097 hoping to implement next? 00:15:04.732 --> 00:15:06.592 Mike Bifulco: We do, but it's really funny. 00:15:06.592 --> 00:15:08.842 I know, I know it sounds a little hard to believe, but in general, 00:15:08.842 --> 00:15:11.332 our backlog is not new integrations. 00:15:11.332 --> 00:15:11.992 It's functionality. 00:15:12.105 --> 00:15:15.465 We are, we have 12 engineers and they're not even building integrations, right? 00:15:15.465 --> 00:15:16.975 That's our, that's our platform team. 00:15:16.993 --> 00:15:18.343 And they're just incredibly fast. 00:15:18.413 --> 00:15:21.343 We've gotten to the point where we can build most new integrations 00:15:21.343 --> 00:15:22.673 unless we're heading something crazy. 00:15:22.711 --> 00:15:26.161 Most new integrations in a matter of a couple of hours, a record of 00:15:26.161 --> 00:15:29.081 my, my co-founder actually built three integrations in a day once. 00:15:29.081 --> 00:15:31.722 The biggest part for us is, is passing them off to our QA team. 00:15:31.752 --> 00:15:34.062 They take a couple of weeks to really, really test them out. 00:15:34.627 --> 00:15:38.077 Gil Feig: Sure that for off the cuff, having never really done this myself, 00:15:38.077 --> 00:15:39.547 that sounds pretty mindblowing. 00:15:39.611 --> 00:15:43.480 I would expect a scale of, I don't know, at least a month, a two to a 00:15:43.480 --> 00:15:46.450 couple of months for the integration in QA and then release kind of thing. 00:15:46.540 --> 00:15:49.370 So it sounds like you're moving really fast and able to work with, I mean, loads 00:15:49.370 --> 00:15:50.810 and loads of providers for good reason. 00:15:50.810 --> 00:15:52.550 You, you must have a really good process for doing that. 00:15:52.580 --> 00:15:53.570 That's that's very cool. 00:15:53.570 --> 00:15:54.380 That's super impressive. 00:15:54.860 --> 00:15:55.700 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:55.700 --> 00:15:57.800 I mean, we like to say we've seen it all at this point. 00:15:57.828 --> 00:16:00.018 I eat like 15 different types of auth. 00:16:00.018 --> 00:16:04.488 We've seen people implement ooff, you know, oh, up to like 12 different 00:16:04.488 --> 00:16:07.248 ways we found security vulnerabilities and how people implement it. 00:16:07.338 --> 00:16:08.598 So our tooling is basically. 00:16:09.293 --> 00:16:11.993 If the company, you know, we have, we have a pretty guided, I would 00:16:11.993 --> 00:16:13.433 say process to help people on board. 00:16:13.583 --> 00:16:16.253 And it's like, what is the name of the field that the access token comes in? 00:16:16.373 --> 00:16:19.943 If the company does not abide by the spec and they call it something 00:16:19.943 --> 00:16:21.383 else, enter that field name here. 00:16:21.473 --> 00:16:22.403 So it's really guided. 00:16:22.403 --> 00:16:25.103 It's really adaptable and kind of just helps us move really fast. 00:16:25.383 --> 00:16:25.773 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:16:25.803 --> 00:16:25.983 Yeah. 00:16:26.003 --> 00:16:28.803 Built from all the little scars and pain points you've experienced in the past. 00:16:28.833 --> 00:16:29.193 No doubt. 00:16:29.503 --> 00:16:29.803 Mike Bifulco: Yep. 00:16:30.243 --> 00:16:30.573 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:16:30.813 --> 00:16:31.053 Cool. 00:16:31.053 --> 00:16:33.153 So let's talk a little bit about API APIs. 00:16:33.237 --> 00:16:37.069 In general, I'm interested in your thoughts on since you, your company has 00:16:37.099 --> 00:16:40.949 integrated with and consume so many API APIs what to you makes up a good API one. 00:16:40.949 --> 00:16:42.539 That's good for developers to work with. 00:16:43.029 --> 00:16:43.509 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:16:43.562 --> 00:16:44.674 I think thinking about. 00:16:45.404 --> 00:16:49.064 First of all just being consumer first, thinking about what applications there 00:16:49.064 --> 00:16:52.420 are people going to use your API for and creating good access patterns 00:16:52.420 --> 00:16:54.389 around that data is, is really critical. 00:16:54.402 --> 00:16:59.782 Anything to avoid people having to make a ton of API requests you make end queries. 00:16:59.783 --> 00:17:02.243 And of course, obviously I think, I think before any of this actually 00:17:02.243 --> 00:17:04.343 comes just really great documentation. 00:17:04.523 --> 00:17:04.583 Yeah. 00:17:04.613 --> 00:17:07.793 You know, there are preferences around using coauthor versus using other 00:17:07.793 --> 00:17:09.383 offers is security of, of those. 00:17:09.893 --> 00:17:12.743 And there, there are merits each of them, but if it's not documented. 00:17:13.533 --> 00:17:14.313 I, yeah. 00:17:14.343 --> 00:17:17.613 And, and I can tell you from our team, who's built hundreds of integrations. 00:17:17.613 --> 00:17:18.183 At this point. 00:17:18.363 --> 00:17:21.003 We don't really have a preference for what type of author you're using. 00:17:21.003 --> 00:17:23.853 One might be a bit more of a pain to implement, but if we can't figure 00:17:23.853 --> 00:17:27.213 it out by immediately looking at your dogs, that's, what's the really 00:17:27.213 --> 00:17:30.363 annoying part having to get in touch with your team and try to have, have 00:17:30.363 --> 00:17:31.653 that team, you know, figure it all out. 00:17:31.653 --> 00:17:32.092 So yeah. 00:17:32.162 --> 00:17:33.262 Documentations number one. 00:17:33.727 --> 00:17:34.057 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:17:34.087 --> 00:17:36.847 Yeah, Often the special sauce when you're implementing with anything 00:17:36.847 --> 00:17:39.097 is kind of being able to read and understand what you're looking at. 00:17:39.217 --> 00:17:42.894 And honestly, frankly, kind of an overlooked career path too, right? 00:17:42.894 --> 00:17:45.654 Like really, really good technical writers who understand the problems 00:17:45.654 --> 00:17:49.224 that are being solved and can eloquently describe what's going on. 00:17:49.314 --> 00:17:53.219 And also accurately is it really, really special when you're working with an API. 00:17:53.574 --> 00:17:54.504 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it's true. 00:17:54.504 --> 00:17:57.114 And it's so it's like great technical writing is really important. 00:17:57.114 --> 00:17:59.634 The other one is just the story or the journey of your docs. 00:17:59.634 --> 00:18:02.454 You know, it's, it's really underrated and people aren't thinking about the 00:18:02.454 --> 00:18:06.324 path that developer's taking there, but if, how you, if, if the method of 00:18:06.324 --> 00:18:07.934 authentication is the last thing in your. 00:18:08.714 --> 00:18:11.204 You know, you're, you're kind of guiding someone of path pathway having 00:18:11.204 --> 00:18:12.764 to click all around and go all over. 00:18:12.914 --> 00:18:16.694 So for us, we actually have our designer and, you know, I would say 00:18:16.694 --> 00:18:19.364 our product team really dedicated to understanding the journey of our 00:18:19.364 --> 00:18:20.864 customers within our documentation. 00:18:20.984 --> 00:18:24.614 We treat that as a product really intensely now to the point where, you 00:18:24.614 --> 00:18:27.794 know, we, we think of user stories and we say, all right, well, they can do this. 00:18:27.794 --> 00:18:29.294 It's a really complicated action. 00:18:29.414 --> 00:18:33.224 So we need them to be able to find this, this detailed doc along 00:18:33.224 --> 00:18:34.274 their journey at the right time. 00:18:34.274 --> 00:18:35.754 But only if they need it, otherwise we don't. 00:18:36.499 --> 00:18:37.819 Slam to which information wants. 00:18:37.819 --> 00:18:40.969 So we think really deeply about that journey that the developers. 00:18:41.949 --> 00:18:42.309 Gil Feig: sure. 00:18:42.339 --> 00:18:42.789 Yeah. 00:18:42.818 --> 00:18:46.533 I, I lack of sufficient term to describe this, but almost the user experience. 00:18:47.648 --> 00:18:50.884 Learning how to build with something is underappreciated 00:18:50.884 --> 00:18:51.934 in the industry in general. 00:18:51.998 --> 00:18:55.193 There's definitely companies, organizations with huge budgets who can go 00:18:55.193 --> 00:18:59.213 And spin up a UX researcher just to work on docs, but that's often not the case. 00:18:59.213 --> 00:19:02.543 And so you really just need engineers or technical writers with a lot of love 00:19:02.543 --> 00:19:07.223 and care and patience for going and rewriting and, you know, experiencing the 00:19:07.223 --> 00:19:08.573 journey and watching other people do it. 00:19:08.968 --> 00:19:09.268 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:19:09.268 --> 00:19:11.878 And it's funny because companies are willing to invest big bucks in 00:19:11.908 --> 00:19:13.708 optimizing copy on their landing page. 00:19:13.708 --> 00:19:15.238 Just not people from, from bouncing. 00:19:15.238 --> 00:19:18.598 But what about stopping developers from bouncing as they go through your docs? 00:19:18.893 --> 00:19:19.343 Gil Feig: Right. 00:19:19.403 --> 00:19:19.823 Yeah. 00:19:20.093 --> 00:19:20.963 Yeah, definitely. 00:19:21.383 --> 00:19:21.593 Yeah. 00:19:21.703 --> 00:19:25.103 We, we sometimes fund the wrong things at the wrong time, I think. 00:19:25.170 --> 00:19:26.194 So okay. 00:19:26.198 --> 00:19:29.259 I'm interested in any challenges that you've faced in sort of 00:19:29.259 --> 00:19:31.119 building this unifying API service. 00:19:31.119 --> 00:19:33.309 Is there something that stands out to you along the way that 00:19:33.309 --> 00:19:34.509 you, that you've taken away? 00:19:34.719 --> 00:19:35.139 Um, 00:19:36.126 --> 00:19:36.571 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:19:36.601 --> 00:19:38.641 So I think you can, of course look at all the differences in 00:19:38.641 --> 00:19:42.021 authentication and pagination and, you know, rate limits and all of that. 00:19:42.586 --> 00:19:43.546 They're solvable, right? 00:19:43.546 --> 00:19:44.806 You just build things around them. 00:19:44.996 --> 00:19:47.866 I think what is hard is what we describe as the mixed functionality 00:19:47.866 --> 00:19:51.796 problem, which is that ultimately we can't define one, the functionality of 00:19:51.796 --> 00:19:55.246 the platforms that we integrate with and two, what their API is exposed. 00:19:55.246 --> 00:19:58.786 And so, and a lot of ways when you're building a unified API, or when you're 00:19:58.786 --> 00:20:03.346 saying we want to build integrations with, let's say HR platforms, and it's important 00:20:03.346 --> 00:20:07.466 to us to pull in everyone's title so that we can show that in this spot, on our 00:20:07.466 --> 00:20:11.106 site, You know, ultimately our customers are like, we want that for all platforms, 00:20:11.106 --> 00:20:13.956 but if a platform doesn't support it, we have to be able to tell our customer 00:20:13.956 --> 00:20:15.636 like, Hey, that that's not possible. 00:20:15.645 --> 00:20:17.925 And I would say that's been a really big challenge for us. 00:20:17.998 --> 00:20:21.128 It's actually becoming better as we be, as we grow in the market, we have 00:20:21.128 --> 00:20:24.668 a bit more sway with API providers asking them to add more data. 00:20:24.735 --> 00:20:27.059 But ultimately again, if a doesn't support it, they don't support it. 00:20:27.269 --> 00:20:30.449 And so building a unified API that perfectly claims to 00:20:30.449 --> 00:20:32.879 normalize all data is tough. 00:20:32.879 --> 00:20:36.089 When some firms just don't have certain data and some platforms have way more. 00:20:37.054 --> 00:20:37.504 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:20:37.534 --> 00:20:38.009 Yeah. 00:20:38.009 --> 00:20:41.639 Are you finding that you need to demonstrate to people who end up buying 00:20:41.849 --> 00:20:45.029 your services that they're getting ROI, or is it something that is kind of proving 00:20:45.029 --> 00:20:46.589 itself once they get into implementation? 00:20:47.229 --> 00:20:47.529 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:20:47.529 --> 00:20:50.649 I mean, I think first of all, for us, we only add value. 00:20:50.649 --> 00:20:52.359 What merged does is revenue generating. 00:20:52.359 --> 00:20:54.549 First of all right, you, you need certain integrations. 00:20:54.669 --> 00:20:56.559 You don't have the capacity to develop them out. 00:20:56.559 --> 00:20:58.989 You need those because you need to support customers who are on them. 00:20:59.109 --> 00:21:01.749 So by having merged, you're able to close those new customers. 00:21:01.959 --> 00:21:03.609 And then on top of that, you're saving developer time. 00:21:03.609 --> 00:21:05.109 So it's revenue generating and it's costing. 00:21:05.203 --> 00:21:08.593 It's, two-fold people come into our sales calls and they're, they, they get it. 00:21:08.623 --> 00:21:11.893 They know what they're buying into before they even get on that call. 00:21:11.893 --> 00:21:13.043 It's, it's pretty exciting. 00:21:13.043 --> 00:21:16.525 I would say our AEs, our, our, our salespeople who have been at multiple 00:21:16.525 --> 00:21:19.735 companies before ours that are, that are doing not similar things, but other, 00:21:19.735 --> 00:21:23.065 you know, sort of like maybe API bays or other tech companies have described 00:21:23.065 --> 00:21:25.915 marriage as just the easiest product to sell when they get on a call with someone, 00:21:25.915 --> 00:21:29.395 because everybody just understands it and viscerally, grasps the pain. 00:21:29.445 --> 00:21:29.598 So. 00:21:30.618 --> 00:21:30.918 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:21:30.968 --> 00:21:34.417 That's a perfectly into my next question of how do you know in general, if you're 00:21:34.417 --> 00:21:35.737 building something that people want. 00:21:36.587 --> 00:21:36.947 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:21:36.947 --> 00:21:40.727 I mean, I think for us, it was a bit easier because Shamsi, my co-founder 00:21:40.727 --> 00:21:42.407 and I both came from backgrounds. 00:21:43.157 --> 00:21:44.147 We would have used those. 00:21:44.147 --> 00:21:44.537 Right. 00:21:44.777 --> 00:21:48.617 And so, so there was a little bit of bias of us coming into this 00:21:48.617 --> 00:21:51.467 being like, all right, well, we both needed this and we both wanted this. 00:21:51.737 --> 00:21:55.907 And so we, we also spent about six months before we started the company 00:21:56.057 --> 00:21:58.817 talking to, we talked to over a hundred different startups in, in 00:21:58.817 --> 00:21:59.747 a bunch of different verticals. 00:21:59.747 --> 00:22:01.397 So we were like, all right, well, we don't want to just be 00:22:01.397 --> 00:22:03.587 biased because we know this is a problem in recruiting and tickets. 00:22:03.622 --> 00:22:04.691 We want to tackle everything. 00:22:04.691 --> 00:22:05.501 So let's, let's ask. 00:22:05.591 --> 00:22:07.721 So we talked to companies that needed HR integrations. 00:22:07.721 --> 00:22:10.781 We talked to companies that needed marketing automation and CRM and 00:22:10.781 --> 00:22:12.371 ticketing, just so many different things. 00:22:12.371 --> 00:22:16.023 And with that every single time we got on a call, we were just like, if something 00:22:16.023 --> 00:22:17.943 like this existed, would you use it? 00:22:18.448 --> 00:22:19.168 Absolutely. 00:22:19.198 --> 00:22:20.308 How much would you be willing to pay? 00:22:20.458 --> 00:22:22.588 Honestly, anything we pay a team of five developers. 00:22:22.588 --> 00:22:25.598 It costs us a million dollars a year, anything to take away the pain. 00:22:25.598 --> 00:22:27.689 We even, even sometimes would flip it and we would just say like, 00:22:27.689 --> 00:22:28.859 how are you doing it internally? 00:22:28.859 --> 00:22:31.919 And they'd be like, well, essentially we have this one service that integrates 00:22:31.919 --> 00:22:34.499 with all the different platforms and translates it to a common language. 00:22:34.499 --> 00:22:36.959 And we're like, okay, well you've essentially built merge internally. 00:22:37.079 --> 00:22:39.509 So it was either, they said they needed it or they had done it. 00:22:40.554 --> 00:22:41.464 Gil Feig: yeah, sure. 00:22:41.535 --> 00:22:44.937 Along those lines then when you're when you were first starting out, so you 00:22:44.937 --> 00:22:47.607 talked to a hundred customers, you spent six months kind of researching things. 00:22:47.787 --> 00:22:49.827 Did those 100 startups? 00:22:49.827 --> 00:22:50.037 Sorry. 00:22:50.037 --> 00:22:52.647 Did they end up being your sort of first customers or was there 00:22:52.647 --> 00:22:54.387 something else you had to do to kind of get the word out there? 00:22:54.447 --> 00:22:56.367 That merge was open for business? 00:22:56.807 --> 00:22:58.817 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, they, they definitely, I would say a good 00:22:58.817 --> 00:23:00.154 number of them did for sure. 00:23:00.154 --> 00:23:01.774 And we actually still have close them. 00:23:01.774 --> 00:23:03.814 I think we, we fully remember it. 00:23:03.814 --> 00:23:07.324 My co-founder tweeted about this recently, but there were three out of those hundred 00:23:07.324 --> 00:23:08.884 that were, were very discouraging. 00:23:08.884 --> 00:23:11.134 That's always going to happen, but we're like, this is a terrible idea. 00:23:11.164 --> 00:23:11.879 Don't do it. 00:23:11.879 --> 00:23:14.534 And I think it was as of like two months ago, all three are 00:23:14.534 --> 00:23:15.824 now signed customers emerged. 00:23:15.824 --> 00:23:17.379 So very, very validating. 00:23:17.379 --> 00:23:18.099 And then that felt. 00:23:18.989 --> 00:23:19.799 Gil Feig: Yeah, that's amazing. 00:23:19.799 --> 00:23:22.709 I hope you pop the champagne or had a nice lunch that day. 00:23:22.709 --> 00:23:23.429 Something like that. 00:23:23.429 --> 00:23:23.699 That's really. 00:23:24.789 --> 00:23:26.259 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it was really exciting. 00:23:26.326 --> 00:23:28.606 Gil Feig: For a follow on to that is how has your strategy 00:23:28.606 --> 00:23:31.696 for acquisition of new customers changed since your initial launch? 00:23:32.251 --> 00:23:32.461 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:23:32.491 --> 00:23:34.831 So, so we still continue to do a bit of outbound. 00:23:34.831 --> 00:23:36.511 We're more inbound and outbound though. 00:23:36.511 --> 00:23:37.771 Word of mouth is a big one. 00:23:37.793 --> 00:23:40.313 I would say we're hearing about, you know, a lot of our customers are coming 00:23:40.313 --> 00:23:43.403 in now saying, oh, we heard that, that, you know, this company is using. 00:23:43.978 --> 00:23:47.641 We have to a lot of competitors thinking about how their competitors are building 00:23:47.641 --> 00:23:50.461 and, and, you know, wanting to get a leg up or wanting to at least have 00:23:50.461 --> 00:23:51.871 the same advantage that they have. 00:23:51.921 --> 00:23:54.394 Those, those are a couple, we are really big on SEO. 00:23:54.394 --> 00:23:57.424 So you do things like search for, you know, any platform that we 00:23:57.424 --> 00:24:01.034 integrate with search for that name, plus API on Google, we tend to rank. 00:24:01.051 --> 00:24:03.661 So we're, we're really trying to follow the developer's journey, which in that 00:24:03.661 --> 00:24:07.981 case is, you know, their CEO is going to them saying, Hey, all of our customers 00:24:07.981 --> 00:24:09.781 are asking for Workday API integration. 00:24:09.843 --> 00:24:12.945 But in general, if you, if you need a work day integration, you need just 00:24:12.945 --> 00:24:17.175 works in bamboo HR and, you know, Gusto and namely and all the other ones. 00:24:17.175 --> 00:24:19.545 And so when you, when you click on it, you land on marriage. 00:24:19.545 --> 00:24:22.605 It says, get a, get a Workday integration, but also get all 00:24:22.605 --> 00:24:24.555 of these other ones sign up now. 00:24:24.675 --> 00:24:26.025 And that's sorta how we're acquiring. 00:24:26.655 --> 00:24:27.315 Gil Feig: Yeah, Cool. 00:24:27.345 --> 00:24:28.125 That's really cool. 00:24:28.155 --> 00:24:31.203 It's it's you've built a lot of momentum inherently in the process here. 00:24:31.563 --> 00:24:34.553 Let's say tomorrow you were starting from scratch again and you were 00:24:34.553 --> 00:24:37.853 gonna build a new API first company, whether it was merged or something 00:24:37.853 --> 00:24:39.803 else that was sort of APIs at its core 00:24:39.856 --> 00:24:41.116 what are the things you would do first? 00:24:41.551 --> 00:24:42.961 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it's interesting. 00:24:42.991 --> 00:24:46.891 I want to say, like, I would choose a more, more performant language, but I 00:24:46.891 --> 00:24:50.971 actually don't cause, cause the fact of the matter is we constantly had to just 00:24:51.181 --> 00:24:54.583 pivot and change how we were building and you know, doing Django and Python at 00:24:54.583 --> 00:24:56.023 Elta enabled us to move incredibly quick. 00:24:56.853 --> 00:24:58.323 We've been able to really scale with that. 00:24:58.323 --> 00:25:01.083 So I wouldn't change, you know, choice of language or any technologies. 00:25:01.115 --> 00:25:06.057 I think one thing that we might might've done is just do a bigger sort of survey 00:25:06.057 --> 00:25:10.077 of the landscape, more research across APIs and understand what the variability 00:25:10.077 --> 00:25:13.137 looks like, because along the way, we've enforced it just tack on things 00:25:13.137 --> 00:25:15.837 like, you know, I kind of mentioned that earlier, but if they don't call 00:25:15.837 --> 00:25:18.627 this field the correct thing, then what, what, you know, do they get. 00:25:19.367 --> 00:25:22.607 But if we had just really gone and looked at a hundred API APIs and spent the 00:25:22.607 --> 00:25:25.487 time we could have, we could have really planned out, like, all right, here's a 00:25:25.487 --> 00:25:28.757 robust system, rather than having all these flags that we have to deprecate 00:25:28.757 --> 00:25:30.627 and be like, does the platform do this? 00:25:30.627 --> 00:25:32.777 Doesn't apart from, and now the flags are kind of confusing. 00:25:32.897 --> 00:25:35.407 We've we've done some work to clean that up, but you know, again, I 00:25:35.417 --> 00:25:37.367 think doing a bigger survey, the landscape would have gone on. 00:25:38.277 --> 00:25:38.667 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:25:38.727 --> 00:25:41.587 Yeah, For whatever it's worth from where I'm sitting, that sounds like 00:25:41.596 --> 00:25:45.136 a great optimistic task and also something that would require you 00:25:45.136 --> 00:25:48.022 to become an expert on a hundred new APIs which takes a lot of time. 00:25:48.022 --> 00:25:50.452 And you may never have been able to get things off the ground, you know? 00:25:50.842 --> 00:25:51.562 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, it's true. 00:25:51.592 --> 00:25:52.342 It's a balance. 00:25:52.352 --> 00:25:55.942 And yeah, I say that now, going back when we were sitting there with no product, 00:25:56.482 --> 00:25:59.032 just sit there and spend potentially two months going through a hundred 00:25:59.032 --> 00:26:00.622 APS and deeply understanding our off. 00:26:01.167 --> 00:26:02.247 Probably not. 00:26:02.271 --> 00:26:04.764 So maybe getting an expert, someone who's built a hundred 00:26:04.764 --> 00:26:06.294 integrations, but that's also tough. 00:26:06.294 --> 00:26:06.504 Right? 00:26:06.504 --> 00:26:07.104 Who's done that. 00:26:07.104 --> 00:26:10.026 I mean, I had, I had already built several and I think we still, 00:26:10.056 --> 00:26:12.486 we still just constantly see new things that we haven't seen before. 00:26:12.806 --> 00:26:13.196 Gil Feig: Sure. 00:26:13.226 --> 00:26:13.586 Sure. 00:26:13.616 --> 00:26:13.976 Yeah. 00:26:14.696 --> 00:26:15.596 Oh, that's all very interesting. 00:26:15.596 --> 00:26:19.676 You you've had quite the journey kind of from gosh, 2020. 00:26:19.676 --> 00:26:21.866 I mean it's two and a half years or whatever, something like 00:26:21.866 --> 00:26:23.666 that to this 0.2 years, roughly. 00:26:23.686 --> 00:26:24.075 That's. 00:26:24.075 --> 00:26:27.152 That's a lot of first of all, a lot of implementation, but also a lot 00:26:27.152 --> 00:26:29.102 of lessons learned that it sounds like you're speaking from some 00:26:29.102 --> 00:26:32.204 really good experience and have built a really fascinating product. 00:26:32.267 --> 00:26:34.547 What, what haven't I asked you about merge that I should have asked. 00:26:36.017 --> 00:26:36.587 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:26:36.617 --> 00:26:39.947 I mean, I think, I think one thing that we find really interesting is 00:26:39.947 --> 00:26:43.007 just how people actually use versus what the customer use cases are. 00:26:43.007 --> 00:26:44.807 They've been, they've been really exciting for us. 00:26:45.207 --> 00:26:48.489 I'm happy to dive into that a little bit, but I would say they they're very varied 00:26:48.489 --> 00:26:53.049 and I'm glad we went in with this mindset of, you know, we want to provide the data. 00:26:53.049 --> 00:26:54.339 We don't want to provide any. 00:26:55.119 --> 00:26:56.319 Information on top of it. 00:26:56.319 --> 00:26:59.319 Like let's say you're building a diversity recruiting platform and 00:26:59.319 --> 00:27:01.659 you want to help people analyze the diversity of the candidates 00:27:01.689 --> 00:27:02.739 throughout your recruiting funnel. 00:27:02.829 --> 00:27:06.159 We didn't, we didn't focus on that use case necessarily when we 00:27:06.159 --> 00:27:09.099 were building, we more said, let's give companies the data there. 00:27:09.709 --> 00:27:12.809 Maximize the amount of data that's normalized and return from our API 00:27:12.809 --> 00:27:16.399 APIs and all the tools that developers need to be able to pull it efficiently 00:27:16.489 --> 00:27:17.569 and do what they want with it. 00:27:17.629 --> 00:27:20.659 Let's not try to be experts in data analytics or insights 00:27:20.659 --> 00:27:21.619 or anything on top of it. 00:27:21.829 --> 00:27:25.459 And so because of that, we've had some really, really cool use cases on top. 00:27:25.519 --> 00:27:28.399 And so a good example would be, you know, a lot of credit card companies 00:27:28.399 --> 00:27:31.194 like ramp and you know, some other big ones that, that, you know, you've 00:27:31.194 --> 00:27:35.047 probably heard of that, that startups are using to power employee credit cards. 00:27:35.083 --> 00:27:37.303 They, they use us for one really cool. 00:27:37.303 --> 00:27:40.153 One is a lot of employees are remote these days by companies 00:27:40.153 --> 00:27:43.333 still want to give a lunch stipend, give $25 a day to all engineers. 00:27:43.752 --> 00:27:46.362 For a lunch if you're within the engineering org, but if you're 00:27:46.362 --> 00:27:50.322 in the partnerships org, you get $200 a week for travel and meals. 00:27:50.322 --> 00:27:52.332 Cause you might want to take out a client or something, you know, 00:27:52.332 --> 00:27:53.412 along there to take out a partner. 00:27:53.742 --> 00:27:58.069 And so what, what ramp does is they offer integrations with 35 different 00:27:58.069 --> 00:28:01.609 HR platforms because they don't know which HR platform their customers on. 00:28:01.789 --> 00:28:02.539 So they're using merge. 00:28:02.539 --> 00:28:05.869 Of course now a ramp costs were, can just log in, connect their HR 00:28:05.869 --> 00:28:09.512 system and then say, all right, we see these teams coming in from merge. 00:28:09.563 --> 00:28:13.163 Which team, and now give them a budget and give them, you know, sort of 00:28:13.211 --> 00:28:15.671 spending categories and employee joins. 00:28:15.731 --> 00:28:19.451 They, we automatically send ramp a web hook to say, Hey, an employee just joined. 00:28:19.511 --> 00:28:20.441 This is their department. 00:28:20.441 --> 00:28:21.311 Here's their address? 00:28:21.311 --> 00:28:24.041 Here's everything ramp allocate to credit card and automatically just 00:28:24.041 --> 00:28:27.251 mails it to them with all the categories that that's one great use case. 00:28:27.305 --> 00:28:28.715 Another, another really cool one. 00:28:28.715 --> 00:28:29.375 And then I'll stop. 00:28:29.375 --> 00:28:30.605 There is, is cybersecurity. 00:28:30.605 --> 00:28:33.365 So a lot of these soft to automation platforms that are 00:28:33.365 --> 00:28:34.775 becoming popular, vantage drugs. 00:28:34.831 --> 00:28:37.013 That that helped you make sure that you're in compliance. 00:28:37.133 --> 00:28:38.573 They use us to monitor employees. 00:28:38.573 --> 00:28:40.193 Are they contractors or full-time. 00:28:40.913 --> 00:28:43.583 And with that, they're able to make sure that if someone gets terminated, 00:28:43.583 --> 00:28:47.543 for example, was there access, revoked from all other services within 24 hours? 00:28:47.595 --> 00:28:49.076 So many different use cases. 00:28:49.076 --> 00:28:51.146 I've only gotten into a couple and those are just within our 00:28:51.146 --> 00:28:52.706 HR API, but it's been really. 00:28:53.706 --> 00:28:56.839 Gil Feig: Yeah, those are really creative and they, they provide some special, 00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:00.559 like magical solutions to modern problems too, that you definitely need to tie 00:29:00.559 --> 00:29:03.379 into lots of things for it to make sense, to even try something like that. 00:29:03.754 --> 00:29:04.534 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:29:04.654 --> 00:29:08.494 And what's interesting also is just that, that nowadays as, as a consumer, you 00:29:08.494 --> 00:29:10.714 expect everything to be integrated deeply. 00:29:10.924 --> 00:29:13.123 Like when when, when you're buying a platform and they're like, all 00:29:13.123 --> 00:29:15.913 right, well, whenever someone joins come add them and invite them here, 00:29:15.913 --> 00:29:17.203 or, you know, whenever someone does. 00:29:17.693 --> 00:29:20.843 Whenever you close a sale, go out in Salesforce, but also 00:29:20.843 --> 00:29:22.163 go add it in our platform. 00:29:22.403 --> 00:29:23.663 No one wants to do that anymore. 00:29:23.663 --> 00:29:24.383 And no one expects. 00:29:24.383 --> 00:29:25.733 Everyone expects that your systems are. 00:29:27.108 --> 00:29:27.498 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:29:27.618 --> 00:29:29.090 Yeah what about other verticals? 00:29:29.090 --> 00:29:31.580 So are there other other verticals that you're dying to get into, 00:29:31.580 --> 00:29:33.320 or that are interesting to merge? 00:29:33.770 --> 00:29:35.540 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, we do have other verticals for sure. 00:29:35.581 --> 00:29:37.433 And we can build very quickly. 00:29:37.523 --> 00:29:39.893 What's important to us is that our customers have a great experience. 00:29:39.893 --> 00:29:43.613 So since we're B2B, we're actually B2B to be all of our customers also 00:29:43.613 --> 00:29:45.023 sell to businesses, of course, right. 00:29:45.023 --> 00:29:47.423 Because these are B2B tools we're integrating with. 00:29:47.813 --> 00:29:50.783 And so it's, it's really important to us to give them a good experience because 00:29:50.783 --> 00:29:53.123 their customers are probably paying them. 00:29:53.243 --> 00:29:53.303 Yeah. 00:29:53.883 --> 00:29:56.613 Anywhere from 10 to several hundred thousand dollars a year 00:29:56.613 --> 00:29:57.783 for that, for that service. 00:29:57.783 --> 00:29:59.463 And that means it has to be great. 00:29:59.463 --> 00:30:01.833 And so we do spend a lot of time on follow-up making sure that 00:30:01.833 --> 00:30:04.273 the use cases are supported and that the data is high quality. 00:30:04.289 --> 00:30:06.849 But we do have a bunch of other verticals we want to move into. 00:30:06.849 --> 00:30:09.865 We're, we're, we're not publicly disclosing get which ones, but 00:30:09.865 --> 00:30:13.085 there's some really cool ones and, and they definitely need unification. 00:30:13.086 --> 00:30:13.626 But what we do is. 00:30:14.331 --> 00:30:15.261 Analyzed demand. 00:30:15.261 --> 00:30:18.021 Look at what our existing customers want versus what new customers want. 00:30:18.111 --> 00:30:21.111 Look at, you know, where VCs investing, what are emerging markets. 00:30:21.141 --> 00:30:23.091 There's so many different factors that go into it. 00:30:23.181 --> 00:30:24.831 Also, how fragmented is a market? 00:30:24.951 --> 00:30:28.101 If there's one player that's dominant, what's the power of a unified API. 00:30:28.596 --> 00:30:29.496 Gil Feig: Yeah, sure. 00:30:29.616 --> 00:30:29.796 Yeah. 00:30:29.796 --> 00:30:31.836 I figured you might not be able to share kind of what's coming, 00:30:31.836 --> 00:30:33.156 but it couldn't hurt to ask there. 00:30:33.301 --> 00:30:36.031 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, I think there are some good ones and some ones that developers 00:30:36.031 --> 00:30:37.591 especially will be really excited about. 00:30:38.246 --> 00:30:39.056 Gil Feig: Yeah, Cool. 00:30:39.086 --> 00:30:39.326 Cool. 00:30:39.326 --> 00:30:41.516 Well, we'll have to keep an eye out for news. 00:30:41.517 --> 00:30:44.710 And along those lines if our listeners developers are interested 00:30:44.710 --> 00:30:47.623 in following merge and keeping an eye on merger, trying out merge for 00:30:47.623 --> 00:30:49.184 their product where should they go? 00:30:49.854 --> 00:30:50.634 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:30:50.634 --> 00:30:53.754 So a merge is it's free to sign up and just get started. 00:30:53.754 --> 00:30:56.814 You can, you can go to merge.dev dev. 00:30:56.864 --> 00:30:59.257 There we have, you know, really good guides to get you 00:30:59.257 --> 00:31:00.487 started to help you dive in. 00:31:00.529 --> 00:31:02.269 And you can start with any of our categories. 00:31:02.269 --> 00:31:04.009 It's you get a hundred dollars a month for free. 00:31:04.009 --> 00:31:05.599 So it's really easy to just have. 00:31:06.624 --> 00:31:06.924 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:31:06.954 --> 00:31:07.314 got it. 00:31:07.494 --> 00:31:10.194 Are there interesting sort of first integrations they can try? 00:31:10.239 --> 00:31:10.539 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:31:10.539 --> 00:31:13.059 So a lot of our integrations, we actually listed there, but a lot of our 00:31:13.059 --> 00:31:15.639 integrations have free trials listed. 00:31:15.639 --> 00:31:17.379 So like bamboo HR is a great example. 00:31:17.379 --> 00:31:19.989 If you, if you go in and just sort of look at a bunch of the platforms 00:31:19.989 --> 00:31:23.829 there, you can just click on them and we provide links to the free trials or 00:31:23.829 --> 00:31:25.489 instructions on how to get a demo account. 00:31:25.507 --> 00:31:28.537 And then also, you know, again, since, since you know, any listener who'd be 00:31:28.537 --> 00:31:30.577 interested, likely works at a B2B company. 00:31:30.661 --> 00:31:32.551 You can also test with adding your company's zones. 00:31:33.289 --> 00:31:33.559 Gil Feig: Yeah. 00:31:33.589 --> 00:31:33.829 Cool. 00:31:33.829 --> 00:31:37.039 So there's, there's a value prop in itself of just being able to 00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:40.219 get in and try sort of the whole full fledged thing with free tools. 00:31:40.254 --> 00:31:42.803 That's really interesting and I'm sure lots of the folks that will be 00:31:42.803 --> 00:31:45.443 listening to this podcast are more on the, Hey, we need to integrate 00:31:45.443 --> 00:31:46.926 with this side of things as well. 00:31:46.939 --> 00:31:49.459 What sort of things are you interested in hearing feedback on from our audio? 00:31:50.449 --> 00:31:52.489 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, we, we would love to hear, you know, we 00:31:52.489 --> 00:31:53.839 are a developer first company. 00:31:53.839 --> 00:31:57.049 We think that's why, you know, we're, we're winning among developers is, is 00:31:57.049 --> 00:31:58.931 everything we do is focused on deaths. 00:31:58.994 --> 00:32:01.514 So we want to hear about the experience we want to hear about onboarding was 00:32:01.514 --> 00:32:03.014 anything confusing in the journey. 00:32:03.014 --> 00:32:05.054 We want it to be as clear and as simple as possible. 00:32:05.204 --> 00:32:07.064 We're developers building for developers. 00:32:07.184 --> 00:32:10.664 We feel fortunate that we can almost be product managers of our own products, 00:32:10.664 --> 00:32:12.704 because we understand what we're building. 00:32:12.999 --> 00:32:16.724 But that being said, you can be, you know, sometimes caught up in, in the internals 00:32:16.724 --> 00:32:19.236 of something and take for granted that you have some inside knowledge. 00:32:19.236 --> 00:32:21.756 And so we just want, we would love feedback on what the journey is like, 00:32:21.756 --> 00:32:24.510 what the onboarding journeys like and then any additional features 00:32:24.510 --> 00:32:25.530 and things people are looking for. 00:32:26.080 --> 00:32:27.580 Gil Feig: Yeah, you'll, you'll be surprised to hear that 00:32:27.580 --> 00:32:30.310 our audience is not shy about sharing their thoughts on things. 00:32:30.310 --> 00:32:32.132 So hopefully you get some good feedback there. 00:32:32.211 --> 00:32:33.201 What about hiring? 00:32:33.201 --> 00:32:33.711 Are you hiring for. 00:32:33.711 --> 00:32:34.431 any roles right now? 00:32:34.796 --> 00:32:36.536 Mike Bifulco: We are absolutely hiring. 00:32:36.603 --> 00:32:39.543 We are hiring for virtually every role across the board. 00:32:39.610 --> 00:32:41.064 We have grown incredibly fast. 00:32:41.064 --> 00:32:43.924 We went from zero to 1700 customers in under a year. 00:32:43.924 --> 00:32:47.391 So we, yeah, so we're really looking to hire we're hiring back end 00:32:47.391 --> 00:32:50.331 engineers software back at, sorry, back end front end, full stack. 00:32:50.656 --> 00:32:52.276 Definitely across the board there. 00:32:52.366 --> 00:32:56.250 And, you know, even, even things like technical solutions, engineers customer 00:32:56.250 --> 00:32:59.280 facing things more on sales, and then we're, we're hiring people to build 00:32:59.280 --> 00:33:00.840 integrations on our platform team. 00:33:00.840 --> 00:33:05.431 So I definitely everywhere in the org and that's ed merged.dev/. 00:33:06.496 --> 00:33:06.826 Gil Feig: Cool. 00:33:06.875 --> 00:33:10.115 And just for sake of completeness, cause I know someone will ask me, 00:33:10.385 --> 00:33:13.205 are you hiring remotely or you're hiring just in a specific location. 00:33:13.205 --> 00:33:13.805 How does that work? 00:33:14.155 --> 00:33:14.455 Mike Bifulco: Yeah. 00:33:14.455 --> 00:33:18.385 So we're, we are in person we're in New York and San Francisco and both 00:33:18.385 --> 00:33:20.095 offices are where we're open to. 00:33:20.162 --> 00:33:21.616 We were remote flexible. 00:33:21.616 --> 00:33:24.916 I would say we, we, you know, we like to say we're kind of pre COVID, you 00:33:24.916 --> 00:33:27.586 know, your packages are, you want to work remotely for a week here and there. 00:33:27.586 --> 00:33:28.246 Totally fine. 00:33:28.366 --> 00:33:29.176 But in general, we are in. 00:33:30.206 --> 00:33:30.536 Gil Feig: Gotcha. 00:33:30.596 --> 00:33:31.046 Cool. 00:33:31.090 --> 00:33:31.377 Okay. 00:33:31.377 --> 00:33:33.083 So that's a bit about merge. 00:33:33.121 --> 00:33:35.623 How can our listeners find you if they want to get in touch with you? 00:33:36.108 --> 00:33:37.038 Mike Bifulco: Yeah, absolutely. 00:33:37.038 --> 00:33:41.328 So you can feel free to email me gil@merged.dev dev. 00:33:41.538 --> 00:33:46.064 Follow me on Twitter, Gil FEI, G Gill fag or, you know, also send me a LinkedIn. 00:33:47.234 --> 00:33:47.414 Gil Feig: Heck. 00:33:47.414 --> 00:33:51.255 Yeah, I will stick all of the relevant links and URLs in the show notes 00:33:51.255 --> 00:33:54.080 for this and make sure that they're posted when the show goes live here. 00:33:54.087 --> 00:33:55.617 It's been really fantastic talking to you. 00:33:55.707 --> 00:33:57.807 I appreciate you coming and spending some time with me and sharing 00:33:57.807 --> 00:33:59.037 about your product experience. 00:33:59.048 --> 00:33:59.228 Yeah. 00:33:59.258 --> 00:33:59.828 Thanks for your time. 00:33:59.828 --> 00:34:00.458 It was great chatting. 00:34:00.813 --> 00:34:02.103 Mike Bifulco: Thank you so much for having me