From Chrome extension to $5B platform | Postman’s journey | Abhinav Asthana (Co-founder & CEO)

Abhinav Asthana is the co-founder and CEO of Postman, the world's leading API collaboration platform used by millions of developers and thousands of companies. What began as a personal itch, a simple Chrome extension Abhinav built to make his own API work easier, became a global phenomenon within weeks. In this episode, we discuss: • Making the leap from India to Silicon Valley • The moment Abhinav realized Postman could win • His principles behind building for developers and non-developers alike • The early monetization experiments that led to their SaaS model • The value of progressive complexity in product design • How community building became a powerful growth lever • And much more… References: • Abhijit Kane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhijitkane/ • Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/ • Ankit Sobti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-sobti/ • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Kong Inc.: https://konghq.com/ • National University of Singapore: https://nus.edu.sg/ • Postman: https://www.postman.com/ • Ram Gupta: : https://www.linkedin.com/in/ram-gupta-39b9711/ • Slack: https://slack.com/ • Stripe: https://stripe.com/ • Stewart Butterfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/butterfield/ • Yahoo: http://yahoo.com/: http://yahoo.com/ Where to find Abhinav: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhinavasthana/ • Twitter/X: https://x.com/a85 Where to find Brett: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson Where to find First Round Capital: • Website: https://firstround.com/ • First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital • This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast Timestamps: (01:18) Why early computer access changed everything (03:39) The first taste of the entrepreneurial bug (09:58) Building BITS360 in college (11:14) Curating entrepreneurial taste (15:49) The ventures that didn’t make it (20:53) The problems that preceded Postman (29:56) How Postman’s team was formed (34:01) Why clear roles prevent chaos (34:50) Scrappy startup life in the early days (36:26) Postman’s path to monetization (39:59) Building a truly collaborative platform (43:00) Navigating market and customer needs (46:02) Cracking the go-to-market code (49:39) Bridging the developer-enterprise divide (54:43) The open-source dilemma