# Marcus Teller, VP Engineering at Roundside Labs — read of API Monetization AI, May 10, 2026 > 9 years in software, 5 managing teams, currently running a 6-person eng org at a 28-person B2B SaaS. We have an API. We've talked about charging for it for two years. I coach U10 soccer on Saturdays which means I have exactly zero weekend cycles for side projects. --- ## How I got here Googled "usage-based billing for api startups stripe metering" after a customer asked us this week why we don't have an API tier. I've looked at Moesif, Lago, Amberflo, and built a half-hearted internal solution that we abandoned in Q3. This came up on page two. Clicked because the title matched the actual thing I was searching for. ## What I clicked first The hero subhead pulled me in: "Building usage-based billing infrastructure typically consumes six months of engineering time and stalls your roadmap." That is true. That is the exact conversation I've had with my CEO three times. The pain framing is accurate and I kept reading. Then I hit "In 10 minutes, you have a production-ready billing system." That's where the page and I started having a disagreement. ## Where I paused The stats block. "2,400+ API Creators and Companies. $8.3M Revenue Generated YTD. 99.99% Platform Uptime SLA." I stopped and tried to find a customer name. A case study. A logo. Something. Then I scrolled further and found this line, buried below the pricing table: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet." So which is it. Either 2,400 companies are using this and generating $8.3M, or there are no live customers. Both sentences are on the same page. I read them twice to make sure I wasn't misreading. ## What I distrusted Almost everything after that disclosure. The numbers in the hero aren't usage stats from a real platform. They appear to be projections or templates dressed up as social proof. The pricing section sells a "dossier" for $5 and a "build starter" for $99. That's not a SaaS product. That's a Gumroad-style blueprint. I genuinely did not understand what I was buying until the fourth scroll. The page opens like a live product pitch, complete with Stripe integration bullet points and "watch revenue flow to your bank account," and then reveals at the bottom that the actual thing being sold is a strategy package and starter code so that I could build this product myself. Those are completely different value propositions. The page doesn't choose between them. "From indie developers earning $500 to $2,000 per month to established SaaS companies generating $200k+ annually" -- this is either a customer testimonial mashup or made-up range. There's no way to know which. The "Wishdeal Factory" branding appears late, with no explanation of what Wishdeal is or why I should trust their Fermi math. The "72/100 Adoptability" score sounds authoritative but I have no idea who is doing the scoring or against what baseline. ## What would convince me One real API creator -- name, their API, what they were charging before versus now, what the billing integration actually looked like in their stack. Not a revenue range. A person. Even a first name and a recognizable API category like "we did this with a geolocation API for a team at an analytics startup." Alternatively: a short screen recording of an actual dashboard, not a 30-second explainer of the concept. Show me the Stripe integration flow from the admin side. Show me what "10 minutes" actually involves. And clarity on what the product IS. Is this a managed service I'm paying $99/month for, or is this a $99 code kit I take and operate myself? The pricing table has both, unlabeled, on the same page. ## What I'd ask in an email reply 1. The page says "no live customers on this idea yet" and also shows 2,400 users and $8.3M revenue. What are those numbers from? 2. When you say "zero-latency proxy," what does that mean technically? You're routing all my API traffic through your infrastructure. Where are your servers, what's the p99 latency hit, and what's the data retention policy on request logs? 3. The $99/mo Professional tier says "unlimited requests." Who's absorbing the infrastructure cost of unlimited requests? What's the actual cost structure under that? ## Verdict: on-the-fence The pain point is real and the page articulates it better than most. But the stat contradiction is a credibility hole I can't get past, and I'm still not sure if this is a product I subscribe to or a playbook I buy and run myself. Fix those two things and I'd reply. --- *Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-10. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*