Starting a developer API business in 2026. Here's week 1:
Shipped:
- PDF API (merge, split, compress, convert)
- Image API (resize, compress, watermark, convert)
- Billing system (Stripe subscriptions)
- Rate limiting per tier
Numbers:
- APIs live: 2
- API endpoints: 10+
- Waitlist signups: growing
- Revenue: early stage
Goal: $25k revenue in 6 months through API subscriptions
Tech decisions:
- SQLite over PostgreSQL (no ops overhead until 10k users)
- Node.js + Express (fast to ship)
- Stripe (best developer experience for billing)
Following along? I'll post weekly. Ask me anything.
