The API-First Mindset: Why Platforms Outlast Products

4 MINS

# The API-First Mindset: Why Platforms Outlast Products

After nearly two decades in product management, I've watched countless products rise and fall. The ones that endure share a common trait: they were built as platforms, not just products.

The difference isn't semantic. It's strategic.

Products Solve Problems. Platforms Create Ecosystems.

A product addresses a specific user need. A platform enables others to build solutions around that need. When we shifted to an API-first architecture at RightsLine, we weren't just improving our technical infrastructure—we were fundamentally changing our business model.

The question changed from "What features should we build?" to "What capabilities should we expose?"

This shift has profound implications for how product teams prioritize, design, and measure success.

The Media Industry Taught Me This Lesson

In media and entertainment, content rights are complex. Multiple stakeholders, overlapping agreements, different territories, various exploitation windows. A monolithic product cannot adapt fast enough to serve this complexity.

But an API-first platform can. Partners integrate with your capabilities. Clients build workflows around your data. The platform becomes infrastructure—invisible yet indispensable.

Three patterns I've observed:

Extensibility over completeness — No product team can anticipate every use case. APIs let customers extend functionality without waiting for your roadmap.

Integration as competitive advantage — In enterprise deals, the question is rarely "Does it work?" but "Does it work with everything else we use?"

Revenue through enablement — When your platform enables others to build value, you capture a share of value you didn't directly create.

The MVP Trap

Early in my career, I was obsessed with shipping the minimum viable product. Get to market fast, learn, iterate. This approach works for consumer products where speed matters most.

For enterprise platforms, I've learned a different lesson: the minimum viable architecture matters more than the minimum viable feature set.

Building the right foundation—APIs, data models, integration patterns—takes longer upfront but compounds over time. Retrofitting platform capabilities onto a product-first architecture is painful and expensive.

A Practical Framework

When evaluating new initiatives, I now ask three questions:

1. Can this capability be consumed programmatically? If not, you're building a feature, not a platform capability.

2. Does this create dependency or optionality? Dependencies lock customers in but also lock you in. Optionality creates sustainable relationships.

3. Who else benefits if this succeeds? Platform thinking requires identifying the ecosystem, not just the user.

The best products I've built were the ones I designed to be consumed by systems I never imagined.

Leading Product Teams Through Ambiguity

Shalabh skipped presentations and built real AI products.

Shalabh Dongaonkar was part of the September 2025 cohort at Curious PM, alongside 13 other talented participants.