Zapier’s aim in life is to make third-party APIs — even crazy APIs — accessible to people who want to knit together their own “best-of-breed” apps suite. The startup was formed by University of Missouri buddies who decided it would be great to be able to take your own favorite apps and make them work together (wait for it) seamlessly. Now it’s got a few hundred integrations or “Zaps” available.
But that work comes with its headaches. Today’s guest, Zapier co-founder Bryan Helmig admits that providing quality of service across disparate apps is tough and is one reason Zapier employees might be considered masochists.
In theory you could do some nutty applications — say big payment comes in from Stripe will cue the disco ball drop in your home office. You get the picture. In theory, Zapier can make that all happen for you.
Other hot topics this week – Google’s foray into quantum computers — as in it may design and make its own. Remember when Google was a “search” company? Also, Teradata’s acquisition of Think Big Analytics. Oh and the rebranding of Google Enterprise as Google for Work. This may seem sort a putting-lipstick-on-a-chicken kind of thing but is really worth a look.
SHOW NOTES
Hosts: Barb Darrow and Derrick Harris
PREVIOUS EPISODES:
Here’s why the democratization of big data really really should excite you. Yes, you.
In which we ask Aaron Levie how Box can compete with giants and what’s up with the IPO
Linode founder Chris Aker on why you don’t want to mess with The Onion
Proposition: AWS isn’t always the low-cost provider. Discuss
Hortonworks CEO on the latest Hadoop hubbub


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