Episode 155 Frank Kilcommins, Principal API Tech Evangelist at SmartBear

Fireside with Voxgig

If you’re in any way curious about the intersection between APIs and AI, and what that might be shaping up to look like, then we’re delighted to let you know that this episode’s guest is the perfect person to shed light on that very topic. Frank is the Principal API Tech Evangelist for SmartBear, where they deliver tools for application performance monitoring, software development, software testing, API testing and API management. In 2010, APIs were starting to become more popular and Frank was starting to get serious about creating reusable interfaces. He continued down this path and has spent the last 2 years with SmartBear, focusing on APIs, for which they have 3 pillars: testing, insights and observability. Frank tells us about SmartBear’s growing interest in acquisitions, and how they’ve managed to balance this facet with their continuing investment in their own organic products. Their strategy is simple: build and buy. And it seems to be working out pretty well for them. We talk a lot on the podcast about marketing to developers, both internally and externally, but Frank brings up an interesting point. Almost every company used software in some way, for something. So while he and SmartBear still value developer focused marketing, they also understand that there’s a whole world of non-technical people out there that have many of the same problems. And Frank knows that he and his team can be the ones to help fix them. Reach out to Frank here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-kilcommins/ Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates and information about upcoming meetups: https://voxgig.substack.com/ Join the Dublin DevRel Meetup group here: www.devrelmeetup.com