David O'Neill of APImetrics
David O’Neill of APImetrics

APImetrics, a Seattle startup that helps developers track the performance of Web services from LinkedIn, Amazon, Facebook and others, has pulled in $500,000 in fresh capital from Bain Capital Ventures.

It marks the first investment from Bain Capital Ventures’ newly-formed seed program, with Salil Deshpande of Bain noting that APImetrics “redefines the way that the enterprise views and values its API resources.”

APIs — application programming interfaces — are critical “pipes” that help the Internet function properly.

“We provide a tool that measures the amount of stuff flowing through the pipes — how fast it is flowing and how many leaks there are,” said APImetrics co-founder David O’Neill in an interview with GeekWire last year.

apimetrics-chart
An APImetrics dashboard

In the past year, APImetrics has been able to quickly identify issues at Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft Azure and others. The company makes money by charging developers to schedule and run tests on APIs, charging from $10 per month to more than $150 per month. In June, the company said that it had run more than five million tests since the service started,

“Today’s IT managers need not just visibility into APIs across complex platforms, but the analytics that deliver actionable intelligence to back API performance,” said O’Neill, who previously led the Seattle startup Viafo.

APImetrics uses an authentication abstraction technology to run structured testing against APIs, with companies like Microsoft, AT&T and TIBCO now using the service.

The landscape for APIs is changing dramatically, growing from a handful just a few years ago to more than 10,000 today. The tools developed by APImetrics are designed to help developers model various API scenarios and provide real-time monitoring and alerts for when things break down.

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