When developers are building software with API access, they need to figure out how to bill users fairly for hitting the API gateway. A flat fee probably wouldn’t cover the heavy users and would be unfair to the lighter ones. Archetype, an early stage startup, has created a metering solution, so developers can bill on a usage basis.

Today the company announced a $3.1 million seed investment to get the company off the ground. The funding closed in May last year.

“What we’re doing at Archetype is we are building an API billing platform. So essentially, what we’re doing is we’re building a billing metering and control structure for API-first companies,” company co-founder Behailu Tekletsadi said.

Tekletsadik says that his solution relies on Stripe’s services to give developers a full-service metering solution. “We’re built on top of Stripe to enable easy integration through their back-end services and some front-end portals to enable API-first companies to launch self-serve products and monetize their platforms.”

This could include usage-based pricing, issuing usage limits or rate restrictions. He says that all of that is bundled into one, “batteries included service.”

It works much like any API service – it’s just a line of code and you can configure the different elements through a dashboard. You can also set it up using the Archetype component library for an external customer.

“If you wanted to deploy a self-service [element] like deploying prices automatically to your end customer, you can actually leverage our component library and basically just dynamically update anything there. And your customers can view their insights, usage stats and manage their subscription through our customer portal,” he said.

It’s still early for the product with the company still piloting the solution with a few customers using it. Currently, the startup has 8 employees, and has just hired a couple of engineers. Tekletsadik, who is Black, says he has built a diverse team so far, even though it wasn’t necessarily intentional.

“I always try to strive for excellence first, and see if [the candidate] also brings any cultural shift [to the company]. I think one of the first things I learned early on in my career is that it’s good to have people with different backgrounds and different experiences.They can challenge you implicitly on some of the things that you might think are normal, that might not be right,” he said.

The company’s seed round was led by MaC Venture Capital with participation from Hustle Fund, Magic Fund, NOMO Ventures, Soma Capital and other investors.

Archetype wants to help developers build a metered API billing solution by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch