>> Live from Mountain View, California,
it's The Cube,
covering DevNet Create 2019,
brought to you by Cisco.
>> Hey, welcome back to the Cube.
Lisa Martin, with John Furrier.
We are coming to you live from The Computer History Museum,
at the third annual Cisco DevNet Create 2019.
Excited to be joined by Joyce Lin,
Developer Advocate from Postman.
Joyce, welcome to The Cube.
>> Thank you.
>> So you are a Developer Advocate, but Postman is,
a tool that helps the community learn about Cisco APIs.
Cisco is a customer of yours,
but tell me a little bit about your experience at
DevNet Create 'cause you have an interesting story
from last year which was your first year at this event.
>> Exactly, last year we just happened to stop by,
and as I was walking through this very room,
you hear all these workshops going on behind us,
my ears perked up 'cause I heard somebody say,
"Python and Postman are two of the most powerful tools."
And I was like, "Hey, I work at Postman."
So I like, stopped in to see,
and I Slacked my team back immediately at the office.
They're really using Postman to teach Cisco technology here.
>> And that was surprising to you.
And here you are now,
here a year later.
>> Yeah. >> Tell us some of the things
that you're expecting to learn,
and hear, and feel, and see from 2019's Create.
>> So, this year I hear about
all these people learning Postman,
learning about tech through Postman.
So, I'm actually giving two talks this afternoon.
The first talk's talking about building the community,
'cause a lot of people use Postman.
And the second talk is about using mock servers.
How to fake an API until you actually code it and deploy it.
>> Take a minute to explain Postman,
why is it so popular?
Why is Cisco jazzed about it?
What are they using it for?
And, how are they bringing that in?
Take a minute to talk about what you guys do.
>> Well, several years ago when Postman
started as a side project,
it was primarily for developers.
And it helped developers do their day to day jobs,
but we found a lot more people
are interacting with technology,
or working at tech companies where,
they might not have the set up,
to initiate a request, an API request.
And so, Postman allows them to,
on their desktop,
be able to interact with the tech in a way
that normally they wouldn't have the whole set up to do it.
>> So, in terms of developers,
is it a freemium model?
Like, they can do it for free?
>> Absolutely, it's freemium,
and I think within the last year we have scooched
almost anything that used to be,
a paid feature,
down to free so you can try it out.
And in fact, if you have a small business
or a side project, it's free.
>> And, what's the talk track you're going to have?
You got two talks.
>> Yeah.
>> One on community, one on servers?
>> Yeah.
So, mock servers. >> Mock servers.
>> Is something that I thought
might be interesting to this crowd,
but, a lot of these people have,
are in charge of managing the infrastructure,
or supporting existing APIs
or services that are out in the Cloud.
And so, mock servers are a way that you can
essentially mock an API for a parallel development,
or to build a prototype.
>> And so, this helps those get faster,
app up and running,
and then what happens when they
have to get rid of mock server,
and put a real server on there?
They got to build out their API,
is that what happens next? >> Typically,
they're spitting up a mock server first,
and then they're building out their own servers.
So, yeah, they would swap out the mock, with their own.
>> And, what's the other talk on community?
Just how to do a community?
Open source, what's the aspects of the community talk?
>> It's kind of an odd topic for this kind of crowd,
but a lot of people work for companies that are,
or work for teams where they're just try to build
like, a sense of community,
or foster some sort of mission.
And so, just telling the Postman story,
and Postman was free for, absolutely free
for a super long time,
and the growth has just been astronomical.
>> You're at six million developers
on the platform right now. >> Yeah, I think,
we're at more than that. >> Two hundred thousand,
companies. >> But I can't say it on here.
>> A 130 million plus APIs,
and that's all just since
the company was established in 2014,
after this sort of, side project that you talked about.
>> Yeah.
>> So, a pretty quick growth trajectory that you guys are on.
>> And a lot of it was word of mouth,
I mean until I came here last year,
and heard all the Cisco people talking about
how they were using Postman.
We did not know that.
>> So how has Postman actually
evolved your technology in the last year,
just since you stumbled upon,
wow this, we are actually really hot here.
We are the facilitator of developers as community,
that's now, what?
585,000 members strong.
Learn about Cisco APIs,
and love to know how that has
sort of catalyzed growth for Postman?
>> Well, back in the day Postman started as developer first.
So, here's an individual developer,
how can they work more effectively?
But, teams like Cisco,
you'll be lucky if you find a team of 10 people.
These are hundreds and thousands of developers,
coming together to work together.
So, Postman as a tool,
has shifted from focusing on only the developer,
to how do you support developers working in larger teams?
>> So, about the community angle,
because one of the things
Lisa and I were just talking about,
because she does a lot of,
women and tech interviews at The Cube,
and we're building out these communities ourselves.
And, it's looking valid,
the old expression, fake it 'til you make it.
>> Yeah.
>> It's kind of a start up buzzword.
But, people try to fake community,
or buy community.
You really can't get away with that in communities.
Communities are very fickle,
as successful open source projects you got to contribute.
You got have to have presence.
You got to show your work.
You got to get rid of the bad actors.
>> Yeah.
>> It's pretty efficient,
but things are new now in communities as modern era,
you're coming into slag, you got tools,
how is community evolving?
What's your perspective on this?
>> That's an interesting question.
I think the community,
you never want to fake community,
absolutely agree.
And, something that Postman has kind of lagged on,
is the community has been huge,
but we haven't been really involved.
So, around the world we have people
giving workshops that we don't even know about,
like around the world.
And, how can we support them,
and allow them to tell,
teach things consistently, and teach best practices.
So, I wouldn't say, unfortunately,
well, or fortunately,
we're not in the position
where we have to encourage the growth,
but rather just support the people
that are already doing this.
This is the community. >> You're an ingredient
to community development,
because you're enabling other people
to be relevant with their communities.
So, you're not so much,
like just trying to be a community player.
>> Yeah.
>> Your product enables community growth.
>> Absolutely, yeah.
>> And so, you just kind of have to feed that.
>> Postman has a tool,
and then Postman the community.
>> You're the seeds of community.
>> Yeah,
we're helping.
>> So, talk about some of the,
where you guys locate?
How many people in your company?
What's some of the numbers? >> Sure,
we're headquartered in San Fransisco.
We have a huge engineering department in Bangalore,
where our founders are from,
and I think just a few months ago
we started having distributed people.
So, now we're everywhere.
I think we're about a hundred head count.
55% percent of that is engineering.
So, we're, I don't know.
We're a start up?
I would say we're a start up.
>> How then, with over two hundred thousand companies,
using the technologies,
we said over six million developers.
How do you get a handle on to your point earlier,
supporting all of these groups
that are out there, enabling as John said,
enabling and fueling communities like DevNet?
I mean, how do you start that
with a hundred person organization?
>> Yeah, and I'm so glad you're like,
wow, that doesn't seem like a huge organization,
'cause other people are like,
"I thought you were way bigger than that."
One thing, is that we do listen to our community.
And so, if they're having a pain point,
we try to aggregate all those voices,
and then come out with a cohesive road map.
'Cause what might be the loudest voice,
or even a lot of voices,
might not be what's right for the tool.
The other thing is we're not an open source company,
but we have a ton of open source projects.
So, the community has again developed converters,
integrations, all these open source tools,
that for their specific work flow,
works for them and actually
they're sharing with the community.
>> Joyce, how did you get into all this?
How did you join the company?
What attracted you?
What's the story?
>> Well, I'm in San Francisco,
so I work for a tech company.
I have a hodgepodge background,
which I won't go into,
'cause it just sounds confusing.
Some people call me the Wolverine at work.
(laughs) >> Ooh, that's a good nickname.
>> Hopefully it's not 'cause I'm so hairy,
but it's 'cause I've had many lives.
So, I kind of bring a little bit of that
to my Developer Advocate role.
A little bit of product, a little bit of marketing,
a little bit of the business side.
>> It's good versatility,
a lot of versatility. >> Exactly, yeah.
>> So let me ask you a question,
one of things we've been covering,
it's obvious we love Cloud native,
we've been covering Cloud in the early days,
'08, '07, all the way through.
Love Cloud native, we get that, check.
Enterprise is high, you see Cisco using your stuff.
Enterprise developers are hot right now.
People are, fast filling applications,
it's got a Cloud native flair to it,
DevNet Create,
but it also got it integrated to the classic enterprise.
>> Yeah.
>> What the difference in your view,
in your experience,
your observations between enterprise developers
and then your classic,
you know, hardcore Cloud native developer?
>> I would say that it's something that Postman
as an organization is dealing with right now.
Because we started developer first,
now we're finding,
oh, it's a different person making these decisions.
What tools should we use?
Sometimes it's top down,
but at the end of the day it's always
the developer that is going to support a top down decision.
A developer that's going to find the utility
out of a certain tool.
So, we're shifting our focus,
but not necessarily by that much.
'Cause as long as you focus developer first, it's still.
>> So, enterprise is kind of,
taking more of a classic Cloud developer,
or native, Cloud native developer, you think?
Is that kind of the profile in your mind?
>> Well, again, you have an enterprise developer,
but where's that enterprise developer
going to be in two years?
(laughs)
So, we're not hanging our hat
too much on enterprise only. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. >> What do you think about
the Cisco's measures of programming the network?
I mean, infrastructure as code?
That's kind of a nice value proposition.
>> Yeah. >> Take the complexity away.
What's your take on reaction to,
that vision?
>> I don't know what you're talking about.
(laughs)
I didn't hear, what part of, tell me more.
>> Well, they're saying developers
shouldn't have to configure hardware,
you know, abstract the network capabilities out
and make it code. >> Yeah, yeah.
>> So the developers just, it just happens.
>> Got it, yeah.
And, if you think about how you can scale,
can you scale linearly or exponentially?
Enabling, every developer or team to deploy
their own code, at their own pace, with their own tools,
is something that allows you to scale exponentially.
So, things like mock servers
like we were talking about earlier,
if I'm relying on somebody, that's my bottleneck,
to spin this up,
with the normal work flow for the organization.
That's a bottleneck.
Spin up your own mock server.
Find your own tools. >> Mock servers,
are a great resource,
because remember the old days in mobile?
The emulators.
Kind of, you had to have an emulator,
to kind of get going.
>> The old days, okay
(laughs) >> Okay, that was like
five years ago. >> Yeah.
>> You know like.
>> Yeah. >> But, similar model like,
hey I don't need, I can't build that out now,
but I need to know what it's going to look like.
So, I can get this done.
>> And, that allows you to iterate at the fastest level,
at the local developer level.
[Both] Yeah.
>> We've been covering the old days here in The Cube.
(laughs)
>> Throwback.
>> Well Joyce, thanks so much for your time,
joining us on The Cube program this morning,
at DevNet Create.
Best of luck in your two sessions later on today.
We look forward to seeing you next time.
>> Great, thank you. Nice to meet you.
>> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching The Cube live,
from Cisco DevNet Create 2019.
Thanks for watching.
(lighthearted techno music)