In this episode of the Modern Web Podcast, host Danny Thompson and co-host Adam Rackis chat with James Perkins, CEO of Unkey, an open-source API management platform built for scale, security, and developer simplicity. James shares the challenges of building globally distributed infrastructure, and why his team ditched serverless and TypeScript in favor of Go and servers.

They talk candidly about the realities of API management at scale, how Unkey balances open source transparency with enterprise-grade performance, and what it takes to build developer trust—both as a brand and as a product.

Keypoints from this episode

• Unkey simplifies API management by acting as middleware for authentication, rate limiting, and security—without requiring deep backend expertise. It's designed for developers to go from idea to production with minimal setup.

• Go over serverless – James and his team initially explored TypeScript and serverless architecture but ultimately returned to Go and servers for better performance, scalability, and developer experience at scale.

• Open-source transparency is core to Unkey’s philosophy – The entire codebase is public, and the team maintains a radically open company culture, where even investor updates and customer support emails are shared internally.

• Customer obsession drives every decision – Regardless of whether a user is paying $0 or $2,000/month, Unkey responds quickly, prioritizes community support, and encourages a culture of ownership and responsiveness across the team.

Chapters

00:00 – Intro + Why Unkey exists
02:00 – James' background and API pain points
03:50 – What Unkey actually does
05:45 – Engineering challenges + scaling architecture
07:30 – Tech stack changes: Go, TypeScript, Serverless
08:45 – Unkey as middleware: auth, rate limiting, analytics
10:40 – Future vision: making APIs as easy as deploying on Vercel
11:45 – Why Go instead of Node or TypeScript
13:30 – Go vs TypeScript: hiring, dependencies, developer experience
15:00 – Why API management is hard at scale
17:15 – Case study: Fireworks and Google Apigee performance issues
19:00 – The complexity of modern API platforms
20:00 – Sponsor break: This Dot Labs
20:35 – Will Unkey expand into app hosting?
22:00 – Unkey's focus on doing one thing really well
23:45 – Content strategy: personal brand vs corporate marketing
26:20 – Customer obsession: internal culture and open company model
30:30 – Open source dynamics and being fully transparent
33:45 – Advice for developer-entrepreneurs
36:24 – Wrap up + where to find the speakers

Follow James Perkins on Social Media

Twitter/X: https://x.com/james_r_perkins

Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/jamesperkins.dev

Unkey: https://www.unkey.com/

Sponsored by This Dot: thisdot.co