The only justifications I can see for this valuation:

1. 17 million developers using Postman. This is impressive for any developer tool.

2. Public API network. This is something that could easily turn into an API marketplace, which sounds like it could excite investors.

I am curious how they calculate #(developers using Postman). I have had Postman accounts associated with my emails at a few different companies. In every case, we moved away from Postman. I probably account for 5 different Postman accounts, all inactive.

Those sounds like the exact justifications for Dockers valuation and that didn't seem to pan out.

Docker's valuation didn't pan out because they tried to swim against Kubernetes.. compare that to CoreOS and openshift.

In this case it should be compared to valuation of tools like figma

Figma is a lot harder to replace than postman and it's primary users are not developers (although they often consume the result of the primary users). I think developers are more fickle than designers as a customer, especially for tools that are not central to the end result.

If I deploy my app and it works it does not really matter if I tested/documented it with postman, it's not central to the app at runtime.

I also think that postman's core product is a lot easier to replicate (they were not even the first to do it) than figma and there are a number of open source projects that do.

When it comes to their API gallery I would expect that any serious API would come with a non-proprietary definition or documentation (in something like OpenAPI or at least just good docs) too.

I don't know, I just have a hard time to see why this product (and by extension the company) is worth 5.6B.

Developers don't make the call. Companies would ask people to create and share a postman collection with API tests instead of checking it into git.

Valuations are crazy these days. But I don't see how this is crazier than other SaaS valuations. Why github when you can run your own server? Why use confluence when you can check in your docs into git?

In the post they say:

> There are now 17 million developers on the Postman API Platform, and the Postman app has been downloaded more than 60 million times so far.

That's a significant user base for a b2b oriented app in a very monetize-able space.

Throwing out some numbers to try and math it out:

- At $5 / yr / user, that's 85mm revenue. 5.4B = 64x rev

- At $10 / yr / user, that's 170mm revenue. 5.4B = 32x rev

- At $20 / yr / user, that's 340mm revenue. 5.4B = 16x rev

All depends on how effectively they monetize.

There's definitely a credible-to-vc's story that this is a large company in the making.

Postman is a nice free tool, but nothing more. I would never pay any money for it. I don't think they can monetize more than 1% of their user base. I am absolutely stunned by this valuation.

Does that "17 million users" include people like me who use the app but have never given them any money?

Oh, 17mm for sure it includes everyone who ever uses it.

Perhaps it’s unrealistic that they’ll be able to monetize 100% of those users?

I'm going with averages here just to ballpark it.

I think they can make significantly more per year for enterprise users, in the $100+ per user range.

There is no way - people will just switch to Insomnia.

the problem with these estimates is that freemium products are lucky to get 1% conversion to paid tier

Valuation seems out of whack - that said money is cheap and trying to find a home right now. VCs need returns so why not?

I have to second this comment... I really like the Postman software (I don't use it with an account). I really want to understand how this kind of valuation can be justified.

I've actually found it has felt bloated for a while now and switched to insomnia.

I'm not a full time frontend dev though so perhaps they would be more willing to pay.

Thanks, I didn't know about this.

No clue. I dropped Postman for Insomnia and haven't looked back.

Everything these days has a billion or more in valuation.

Too much money floating around amongst funds

Printing presses switching into high gear around the world. LBO shops follow.

Money have never been cheaper, ever

VCs really like bottom up SAAS

> bottom up SAAS

What does that mean? Is there a top down SAAS?

Bottom up = individual users sell to decision makers

Top down = decision makers force individual users to use

Haven't you read the announcement?

  strong management team point to a future for Postman with virtually unlimited possibilities