EasyPost

Why API companies are great bets: impossible to rip out once ingrained

Rahul Vohra explains his thesis for investing in business-infrastructure API companies like Clearbit and EasyPost: once an API gets ingrained in a company's stack, it becomes next to impossible to remove, creating durable lock-in.

“Some of my personal investments that have done the best have been companies like Clearbit, which is a rather well-known API for data enrichment, everything from an IP address to an email address. To EasyPost, which is an API for really super simple and rapid shipping. API companies are particularly interested because— interesting because once they get ingrained in a company, they're next to impossible to rip out.”

Steal thisBuild or back infrastructure APIs that embed deep in customer workflows so switching costs make them un-rippable.