Abhinav Asthana, Co-Founder & CEO of Postman, joins Nataraj Sindam to trace Postman's journey from a side project into the world's leading API platform — trusted by more than 40 million developers and 98% of the Fortune 500. Abhinav shares how Postman reached Ramen profitability through simple in-product upgrades before ever raising venture capital, why he turned down early acquisition offers and moved from India to the US, how the company crossed from a single-player developer tool into an enterprise platform, why developer products are uniquely hard to monetize, and why AI agents are now a first-class class of API consumers reshaping Postman's next decade with Astro, Passport, Fabric, and Fern.
5 Things You'll Learn from This Episode
- How Abhinav went from building BITS 360 (a virtual campus tour) and a panorama-sharing app to founding Postman as a side project — and how side projects can become category-defining companies.
- How Postman reached "Ramen profitability" through simple in-product upgrade purchases before ever raising venture capital.
- Why Postman deliberately turned down acquisition offers and moved from India to the US to build a category-leading company close to cutting-edge customers.
- How Postman crossed from a single-player developer tool into a team and enterprise API platform by validating pricing and workflows with beta programs.
- Why developer products are uniquely hard to monetize — keep the developer layer free and open, then prove ROI to their managers.
- How AI agents became a new class of API consumers, and how Postman is building Astro, Passport, Fabric, and Fern for the agent-native era.
About the Episode
Abhinav Asthana, Co-Founder & CEO of Postman, joins Nataraj to trace Postman's journey from a side project into the world's leading API platform — trusted by more than 40 million developers and 98% of the Fortune 500. Abhinav shares how Postman reached Ramen profitability before raising venture capital, why he turned down early acquisition offers and moved from India to the US, how the company crossed from a single-player developer tool to an enterprise platform, and why AI agents are now a first-class class of API consumers reshaping the company's next decade.
Timestamps
- 0:00 — Introduction: Postman and Abhinav's journey
- 2:15 — Before Postman: becoming a developer in India
- 5:06 — BITS 360: the virtual campus tour that started it all
- 7:09 — Monetizing mobile and the rise of Instagram
- 8:32 — Parting ways and hacking on Postman on the side
- 9:08 — The original problem: testing APIs
- 11:05 — From side project to the main thing
- 11:58 — The first signals of demand (Chrome Web Store)
- 13:18 — Reaching Ramen profitability with upgrade packs
- 15:52 — Realizing Postman was a venture-scale business
- 17:46 — The enterprise journey and product validation
- 20:22 — Why he refused to sell Postman
- 22:10 — Moving to the US as an Indian founder
- 24:00 — Building a global team
- 24:38 — What made Postman compound
- 27:01 — Why developers are hard to serve
- 28:32 — How vibe coding and agents change API consumption
- 33:16 — Do embedded API tools reduce the need for Postman?
- 35:02 — Building in India vs. the US
- 37:17 — Founders and companies he admires
- 38:59 — How AI changed how Postman operates
- 41:22 — Thoughts on "token maxing"
- 43:55 — Inside Astro: an agentic operating system
- 45:17 — The agent identity Passport
- 47:08 — Where Postman goes in three to five years
- 48:27 — IPO plans?
Key Insights
Q: What is Postman?
Postman is the world's leading API platform, used by more than 40 million developers and 500,000 organizations, including 98% of the Fortune 500. It's a full platform to design, develop, test, monitor, document, and distribute APIs, with built-in governance and security. It began as a side project to make testing APIs simple and has grown into an enterprise system of record for APIs.
Q: How did Postman make money before raising venture capital?
Postman reached "Ramen profitability" through simple in-product upgrade purchases — developers hit a friction point and bought a pack. The first model that clicked was around automation and workflow testing, and when teams began buying in bulk it revealed that Postman wasn't just an individual tool but a product for teams and enterprises. Only after that traction did Postman raise a seed round.
Q: Why are developer products hard to monetize?
You can't tell developers what to buy or use — they choose the tools themselves, and part of any enterprise's own developers may even build competing tools. The winning approach is to keep the developer layer free and open, build genuine competitive advantages on hard problems, then quantify and sell ROI to their managers and enterprise buyers.
Q: How is Postman preparing for AI agents?
Postman treats AI agents as a new class of API consumers — as important as human developers. It's building agent-native products including Astro (an agentic operating system that gives agents an identity and a control plane), Passport (identity and access control so agents never hold raw API keys), plus Fabric and Fern — betting agents will consume and build APIs a thousand times more than developers ever did.
About Abhinav Asthana
Abhinav Asthana is the Co-Founder and CEO of Postman, the world's leading API platform, trusted by more than 40 million developers and 500,000 organizations — including 98% of the Fortune 500. A lifelong developer, he started Postman as a side project to make testing APIs simple, bootstrapped it to profitability, and scaled it into an AI-native enterprise platform headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Bangalore, Boston, New York City, and Tokyo. Postman is backed by Battery Ventures, BOND, Coatue, CRV, Insight Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners.
Co-Founder & CEO at Postman
About the Host
Nataraj Sindam is the creator of The Startup Project, a podcast featuring founders, investors, and operators building the future.
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