How Postman Became the World's Leading API Platform | Co-Founder & CEO of Postman Abhinav Asthana

Postman is the world's leading API platform, trusted by more than 40 million developers and 98% of the Fortune 500. In this episode, we trace how Postman went from a developer's side project into a global, AI-native enterprise platform. Abhinav Asthana shares how Postman reached profitability before raising venture capital, why developer products are so hard to monetize, why he refused to sell and moved from India to the US, and how AI agents are reshaping the company's next decade.

Key topics:

• Building Postman as a side project to solve API testing
• Reaching Ramen profitability with in-product upgrades
• Why developer products are hard to monetize
• Turning down acquisition and moving from India to the US
• Single-player tool to enterprise API platformBuilding in India vs. the US
• AI agents as a new class of API consumers
• Astro, Passport, Fabric, and Fern — the agent-native stack
• Thoughts on "token maxing" and AI spend

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction: Postman and Abhinav's journey

02:15 - Before Postman: becoming a developer in India

05:06 - BITS 360: the virtual campus tour that started it all

07:09 - Monetizing mobile and the rise of Instagram

08:32 - Parting ways and hacking on Postman on the side

09:08 - 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

24:38 - What made Postman compound

27:01 - Why developers are hard to serve

28:32 - How vibe coding and agents change API consumption

35:02 - Building in India vs. the US

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?

Resources & Links:

Postman → https://www.postman.com/

Abhinav Asthana → https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavasthana/

Nataraj Sindam → https://www.linkedin.com/in/natarajsindam/

Startup Project Episodes → https://thestartupproject.io/episodes