---
published: true
layout: post
title: I Will Be Joining Naftiko as the Chief Community Officer
date: 2025-06-02T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Startups
  - Integration
  - Open Source
  - Community
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/dark-dali-cargo-ship-fog.jpg
---
I have been engaged in a number of conversations with folks since I left Bloomberg last August, consulting and exploring different ways that I can work with startups and enterprises to govern APIs. I have been open to full time positions and consulting work, while still investing in content and artifacts for API Evangelist. I have also been cultivating and steering my work as API Evangelist towards some potential startup ideas for when the right people come along.

Well, the right person has come along. At APIdays me and my old friend [Jérôme Louvel](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlouvel/) from Restlet and Talend fame got together to talk about a vision he had for API integrations via a startup called Naftiko. The vision Jérôme had prepared in deck form immediately spoke to me, reflecting my view of not just the API consumer, but also the API producer landscape today. The deck for Naftiko was the most pragmatic and industrial-grade vision for helping deliver on APIs at scale that I have come across, which got the gears in my head turning.

After leaving APIdays I kept thinking about what Jérôme had shared and how it dovetailed so nicely with the API landscape mapping I’ve been doing with API Evangelist and APIs.io over the last year. Then I received an email from Jérôme asking if I’d consider joining as the Chief Community Officer, helping him define and lead the open-source core for the company. It took me about an hour to decide, responding immediately with an emphatic—YES! I know and trust Jérôme’s business and technical skills, but his deck also spoke to me in a way that left me knowing I had to get on board. This would be my biggest chance to take what I’ve been doing at API Evangelist, Postman, and Bloomberg to the next level with an open-source core.

With Naftiko, Jérôme and I are looking to modernize API consumption for cloud-native developers, enabling seamless and innovative API integrations that drive efficiency and enable versatile business use cases, while elevating the developer experience. My work on API governance, developer experience, and API contracts with API Evangelist dovetails beautifully with Jérôme’s vision for Naftiko, and it provides me with an open-source engine that can automate enterprise API operations in the governed manner I envision. All the work I have been doing with open-source API specifications and defining common public API resources using APIs.json, OpenAPI, and JSON Schema will begin shifting towards Naftiko this week.

I love the energy of a new startup with a mission. I love having smart people I can build with. I am eager to build an industrial-grade open-source API automation engine that can deliver for any type of integration. We are just getting started, but if you are interested in learning more about what Jérôme and I are building at Naftiko, feel free to email me at kinlane@naftiko.io. I will keep doing my research and storytelling on API Evangelist, but 110% of my energy will go towards Naftiko now, and work here on API Evangelist will likely be all about what I am researching and learning along the way. It will take me a week or two to make the shift, but throughout the summer you’ll hear more about what we are up to.