I like the apilayer company tagline: “Automate What Should Be Automated.” They have this thick suite of products that are all APIs with clear documentation. They all have usable free tiers to develop against and prove out an idea, and then paid plans if you need to start using the APIs more aggressively. They have a brand new one: marketstack.
With this API, you have access to stock market data both current and historical. Got an idea for an app (or business!) that needs stock data? Wanna chart out how Apple is doing? Hit the REST API with your key and the AAPL stock symbol and you’ll get back just the JSON data you need. If you’ve always wanted to build a stock market app, this totally opens that door.
That’s what I love about stuff like this. I’ve seen so many people with startup ideas, but then end up being limited by the fact that they just don’t have the data they need to make it actually useful. So many business ideas are really founded on what kind of data you have access to. APIs like marketstack open those doors in affordable ways to everyone.
I think picking out technology stacks is fun, even just to think about. Like doesn’t it sound fun to build an Electron app with something like Electron Forge so you have a React+webpack setup, then hit the marketstack API for interesting market data and use nivo to build charts, chucking whatever data you need to save into Fauna?