Quick Thoughts on Placid.app

A year ago, Forbes posed this question: API Economy: Is It The Next Big Thing?

Based on Twilio’s post-IPO performance, and Stripe’s mooted valuation, I believe “no” is the answer. The API Economy isn’t “The Next Big Thing” - it’s the Now Big Thing.

”There’s an app for that” has become “there’s an API for that.” It’s not just venture backed or publicly listed companies creating value. Like any healthy economy, small businesses are boosting and growing the API Economy.

A new favourite of mine is Placid.app. It’s helping to create a new category of asset auto-generation APIs - Bannerbear and Pencil are two other players in this API space.

Placid.app stands out for a few reasons:

It’s simple. Just images - nothing more, nothing less. And their preset designs cover off most of the social networks du jour: Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Built for no-coders. Their own easy-to-use API powers simple integrations with no-code tools like Airtable, Webflow, and Zapier. Implementing Placid-generated images on this GatsbyJS-generated blog took a couple of minutes.
**It’s great value. **$19 gets you unlimited generated images, an easy to use template editor, API access, and access to all of their integrations.

It’s been bootstrapped into existence by Armin Ulrich, and he’s evolved Placid.app from a side project into a full-time business 👏