Strategy question
If Netflix decides they're going to build API products, how do you decide what the product strategy should be?
- Plaid
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Strategy for a company entering a platform and API business model, identifying real customers and protecting the core moat.
How to approach it
- Clarify what 'API products' means: likely developer or partner access to content metadata or infrastructure tech, not the licensed streaming catalog itself.
- Identify potential customers: device manufacturers, other apps wanting universal search, or B2B analytics buyers.
- Assess strategic rationale: does this diversify revenue away from subscriber growth, or dilute focus from the core content business.
- Prioritize the highest-leverage, lowest-risk API, universal search or discovery metadata, over exposing the proprietary recommendation algorithm.
- Weigh competitive risk: giving third parties access to content data could help aggregators and competitors more than it helps the company.
- Recommend a narrow, partner-only API strategy for device or OS integration rather than a broad public developer platform.
What a strong answer includes
- Correctly distinguishes low-risk APIs, metadata for device partners, from high-risk ones, the recommendation engine, a key strategic judgment.
- Notes the real asset to protect is best-in-class personalization, not something to expose.
- Reaches a clear, bounded recommendation instead of 'open everything up.'
Common mistakes
- Proposing a fully open public API platform without weighing competitive or IP risk.
- Not clarifying what 'API products' even means before answering.
Likely follow-up questions
- Which specific partners would you prioritize first?
- How would you price access to this API?
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More questions from Plaid
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop