I've been screwed by being the middleman more times than I care to admit.
Every time, I thought I was being smart. Leverage someone else's infrastructure. Move fast. Plug in an API and ship.
Every time, I got squeezed. Pivoted. Or shut down entirely.
Here's what nobody tells you about the API-first world.
The Neobank That Wasn't
Four years ago, I started a neobank. It was hot. APIs were finally good enough to make it possible. The pitch was simple: banking should be easy to build now.
It wasn't.
Not because the tech was hard. Because the rules changed overnight.
When I started, you could launch a neobank with $100K and some basic compliance work. By the time I was ready to launch, the US government moved the goalposts.
Banks got spooked by crypto (even though I wasn't doing crypto) and fin-tech and became significantly stricter. Suddenly, every fintech partnership required $2M sitting in reserves just to prove you were serious.
Long story short: I shut it down.
But here's the real problem I didn't see coming:
When you're building on someone else's API, you can only build what they let you build.
Every neobank uses the same banking APIs. Same features. Same limitations. There's no way to differentiate when everyone has access to the exact same building blocks.
Innovation in fintech? Nearly impossible when you're a middleman.
The Lending Business That Owned Me
You'd think I learned my lesson.
I didn't.
Next, I built SimpleDirect Financing. We connected contractors with lenders. Classic middleman play.
Our lending partners controlled everything:
- They set the rates
- They changed terms whenever they wanted
- They could pull the plug anytime
Our entire model assumed there would always be multiple lending partners competing for our deals. Then interest rates spiked. Partners disappeared. Our leverage evaporated.
We were building on someone else's foundation. When they shifted, we scrambled.
The AI Wrapper Trap
Look at AI startups right now. Everyone's building wrappers around the same 3-4 LLM APIs.
OpenAI changes pricing? Your margins die.
Claude releases a new feature? Your product is obsolete.
Google undercuts everyone? Your differentiation vanishes.
I watched Cluely lose their identity in one product cycle. Not because they built badly. Because they didn't own the experience.
When your core value comes from someone else's API, you're always one update away from irrelevance.
What I'm Building Instead
I'm done being the middleman.
I'm not building businesses where:
- One policy change shuts me down
- One API change kills my product
- One partner pulling out destroys my model
I'm building for 30 years, not 3.
That means:
- Owning the full experience (start to finish, no dependencies)
- Building real moats (not just API integration speed)
- Taking full responsibility (if it fails, it's on me—not a third party who pulled the rug)
SimpleDirect now? We're building tools founders control. Not wrappers around someone else's platform.
ANC? Premium services where I'm the product. No API can replace what we do.
If a business can be killed by someone else's decision, it's not a business. It's a bet on someone else's generosity.
The Real Question
Ask yourself:
If your biggest partner pulled out tomorrow, would your business survive?
If the answer is no, you're not building a business. You're renting one.
API-first sounds fast. Plug and play sounds easy. But you're playing someone else's game, on their board, with their rules.
I've been burned enough times to know:
The only game worth playing is the one you own.
What about you? Are you building, or are you middleman-ing?
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