How to bring life to (and fund) an API with Matt Sueoka and Stephany Kirkpatrick
31So you've made an API. It connects one thing to another, and it works well. So how do you turn that into a business? On this week's TechCrunch Live, I host the perfect pairing if guests to talk about this.
Stephany Kirkpatrick co-founded and runs Orum and has raised $82m for the company, which sells the Momentum API
Orum calls it "A simple, smart payments API." It enables customers and businesses access to real-time payment rails without requiring a bank integration. This is a hugely impressive feat – but we're not here to talk about the API itself but how you get investors to fund an API.
With Stephanie, we have Matt Sueoka from AMEX Ventures – the VC arm of American Express. They participated in Orum's Series A. And I think this makes for an interesting setup.
AMEX Ventures is a corporate venture capital firm, and they tend to have different goals and operational input than a traditional VC fund. And because of that, you, as a startup founder, should have different approaches and expectations. We'll talk about it.
But first, let's talk about TechCrunch Disrupt. The show is coming up in October, and tickets are still available. It's live and in person in San Francisco's Moscone Center. We have five stages of content with huge newsmakers on the Disrupt stage, more content like TechCrunch Live on the TC + stage, breakouts sessions, Q&A events, and Startup Battlefield, which is huge this year. Anyway, I hope you can make it. If anything, come to the event and watch me mess up live and in person. I'm hosting Startup Battlefield, which means there are so many names I'll going to miss pronounce.