Professional Role and Company Overview
Derric Gilling is the Co-founder and CEO of Moesif, a leading API analytics and monetization platform headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Moesif specializes in providing enterprises—especially API-first and product engineering-focused organizations—with tools to better productize, monetize, and strategically manage their APIs. Moesif operates as an independent subsidiary under WSO2's API Management Business Unit following its acquisition by WSO2 in May 2025, signaling a strategic expansion to enhance WSO2’s global API management offerings.
Career and Background
Derric graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and early in his career worked at Intel, where he developed award-winning functional and formal verification software and contributed as a computer architect. At Intel, he gained valuable insights into efficient team management, strategic roadmap planning, product management discipline, and the importance of balancing feature delivery with quality assurance. These operational principles have informed his leadership approach at Moesif.
Before founding Moesif in 2017, Derric co-founded another startup, Probe Market, operating in the ecommerce space. His direct experience with APIs during this period influenced the pivot to API analytics and monetization.
Company Evolution and Market Positioning
Initially, Moesif focused on distributed tracing and API debugging tools, but in 2019 strategically pivoted toward the broader and underserved API analytics and product monetization market. This pivot was based on the recognition that API products have become core strategic assets discussed at executive and C-suite levels, with a growing API economy exemplified by companies like Twilio.
Moesif’s core value proposition lies in providing product leaders (VPs of Product, Directors of Product, and engineering leadership) with actionable insights derived from API usage data that inform growth strategy, user engagement, and monetization opportunities. The platform supports usage-based billing models critical for companies monetizing APIs and integrates with key billing providers such as Stripe and Chargbee.
Clientele and Industry Reach
Moesif serves hundreds of customers across diverse industries, including fintech, healthcare tech, logistics, B2B SaaS platforms, NFTs, and Web3 startups. Notable customers mentioned include PandaDoc and UPS. The company focuses heavily on supporting API-first businesses at various growth stages—from early-stage startups (Series A, B, C) through larger enterprises.
Market Strategy and Partnerships
Moesif operates in a unique market niche bridging two adjacent categories:
- Traditional web and mobile analytics (e.g., Amplitude, Segment) focused primarily on B2C and mobile platforms.
- API gateway and management platforms targeting infrastructure teams (DevOps, SREs) focused on API delivery.
Moesif differentiates by targeting product management and business teams, enabling a land-and-expand sales strategy that begins with product leadership and extends to engineering, success, sales, and marketing teams. The company maintains partnerships and plugins with major API gateway providers and cloud vendors—including Amazon, Azure, Pike, Kong—and analytics platforms such as HubSpot and Segment, creating complementary value for joint customers.
Thought Leadership and Industry Engagement
Derric is an active thought leader in API strategy, frequently speaking at developer and industry conferences such as API World, DeveloperWeek, Collision, APIDays, and participates in podcasts and interviews discussing API monetization, productization, and strategy. He has published work including a report with O’Reilly titled “API Strategy for Decision Makers.” He is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council and serves on advisory boards like the API World Advisory Board.
Funding and Growth
Moesif raised a $3.5 million seed round in 2019 during its critical pivot to API analytics. As of late 2024 and early 2025, the company successfully secured over $15 million in funding to support product development and category creation efforts. Their investors include firms aligned with category-defining startups, such as Maris and Kraft, who support longer-term investment strategies in new market creation.
Business Philosophy and Leadership Insights
Derric emphasizes the importance of focus and staged execution, advising against “boiling the ocean.” Moesif prioritized perfecting its API analytics capabilities before adding monetization and billing features. His leadership style is informed by a blend of startup agility and best practices learned from large enterprise operations at Intel regarding product roadmap discipline, resource allocation, and engineering management.
He identifies customer success and tangible business impact as primary measures of category creation success rather than reliance on analyst endorsements (e.g., Gartner or G2). His approach centers on deep engagement with customers to deliver actionable API usage insights that change product and growth strategies.
Future Vision
Derric’s vision for Moesif over the next three years includes becoming the number one growth and experience platform for API businesses globally, inspired by successful growth models such as HubSpot’s modular expansion strategy. Moesif aims to establish its analytics platform as the definitive source of truth for API product performance while layering additional modules for automation, monetization, and customer lifecycle management.
Contact and Public Presence
- Company Website: [www.moesif.com](https://www.moesif.com)
- Frequent contributor to the Moesif Blog and various podcast platforms.
This data-rich profile highlights Derric Gilling as a seasoned technology leader with deep expertise in API analytics and monetization, strategically positioning Moesif as a cross-functional solution provider targeting the evolving API economy’s product-centric growth and monetization challenges.
