API Fortress monitoring tool from Clinton Hill founder building product

One of the drivers of data-sourced software is the API, which sends messages from between one tool to what that tool might display. So if you’re a developer working with a mess of them, it can be challenging to keep track when one or more stop working. That’s what Patrick Poulin is trying to solve.

“My cofounders and I use and build APIs on a daily basis and were looking for a tool to test and monitor them. We realized this tool didn’t exist and built it ourselves,” said Poulin, 33, of API Fortress, an offering from a Brooklyn-Italy team. “When our friends and peers wanted to use it too, we realized we had something.”

API Fortress is an automated testing tool for APIs. While many developers have built something like this on a smaller scale, larger companies managing thousands of APIs have been looking for a way to test them every minute, hour or day. Like many small scalable tech teams, API Fortress is seeking funding to extend their marketing and sales efforts to reach a bigger audience.

“That’s one unique aspect of our product,” Poulin adds. “API Fortress is a fairly technical product and some VC prefer to focus on social or advertising but love the idea, so they make introductions to peers that can better understand the vision.”

Poulin, who lives in Clinton Hill, met his two cofounders when they were coworkers together almost five years ago at a Manhattan-based mobile tech firm and continued working together on side projects since they moved on. Poulin’s two cofounders requested to not be named in this story, as both are still working full-time at other organizations and they fear a perceived conflict.

Of a variety of projects he and his two cofounders were trialing, Poulin eventually figured that API Fortress had the most potential: “Enough to make me quit my day job,” he said.

API Fortress released their public beta last month at NY Tech Day, and are finding the right companies for their free beta period.

When asked how being in Brooklyn has shaped their produced, Poulin said, “It’s really helped us focus on what the product is. When you’re surrounded by the same people in the same office, the input gets fairly stagnant. But in Brooklyn, we work in many different locations. When I talk about API Fortress in Brooklyn, an API developer might ask very specific questions, while an artist will want to know what the product is about at its core without being overly technical. It has really helped us focus.”