The innovation engine you’re overlooking: simplicity
Ben Imadali

At Sibi, we make buying easier for our customers.

Our customers are juggling a dozen tools just to get the basics done: ordering products, tracking purchases, keeping teams aligned. It’s not just inefficient; it’s painful. Disconnected systems, scattered data, and error-prone manual workarounds constantly plague our customers.

On the Headless team, our goal is to bring buying closer to customers, solving the problems created by fragmented tools.

Our first instinct was the obvious one, centered around the core value of our platform: give customers the power to integrate ordering directly into their systems. We built clean, well-documented APIs covering everything from product availability to order updates and invoices via a webhook. Everything you would need to wire up purchasing to your workflow.

And then… no one adopted them.

A few customers expressed interest and a couple even started integrating. But none crossed the finish line.

The story resonated, but the approach was wrong. The lift was too heavy. The gap between the ideal vision and actually getting there was too wide.

Dogfooding our way forward

Without adoption, we couldn't validate whether our APIs were valuable. We were in the dark.

To ensure we could learn quickly and improve our APIs, we started to dogfood our tools (meaning we started using our own tools internally.)

We quickly learned that ordering was complex. If we wanted customers to succeed, we had to make our capabilities radically easier to adopt.

That is how Checkout Links were born, a way to trigger an order through a simple URL. No REST calls. Just build the link and an instant buying experience is unlocked.

Simplicity as a multiplier

It started with a single HVAC pro using a Google Sheet to generate and manage checkout links. They quickly got up and running, ordering HVAC systems for new home construction projects and saving valuable time for their team. No engineering required, no heavy lift, just immediate value and one less tool to jump between.

Then something interesting happened.

Other teams at Sibi started imagining what they could build with Checkout Links and started prototyping. No REST API documentation, no asking for permission, no roadmapping required. They simply saw how easy it was and started using them.

Buying recommended products in Smart Jobs? Powered by Checkout Links. Instant purchases from HVAC Matchups? Checkout Links. One-click ordering embedded directly into customer workflows? Checkout Links.

The simplicity of the model didn’t just help customers move faster. It helped us move faster. It unlocked imagination and experimentation, both inside our company and out in the field.

Today, Checkout Links are everywhere in our product. They’ve nearly taken over.

Simple isn’t easy

It’s tempting to hear “just a link” and think the solution was obvious. But simple isn’t easy.

Behind the scenes, we had to untangle real complexity: stateful carts (we like to call them trucks), fulfillment logic, distribution centers, payment methods, edge cases. We had to decide what to expose and what to keep hidden. We had to design APIs that could handle a messy world without forcing that mess onto the people trying to use them.

The work was hard. But the vision was clear: an experience where ordering is fast, flexible, and accessible wherever our customers work.

And we keep marching toward it.

Simplicity unlocks innovation

Simplicity isn’t just about aesthetics or ease of use. It’s a catalyst for innovation.

The simpler the tools, the faster the feedback loop. The faster the feedback loop, the more space there is for creativity. When you lower the cost of experimentation, people imagine more, build more, and solve problems you didn’t even know existed.

We thought we were building ordering APIs. What we were really building was a foundation for flexible, shareable, instant purchase experiences, with use cases we couldn’t have predicted when we started.

So if you’re asking how to unlock innovation on your own team, start here:

  • How hard is it to get to the first moment of value?
  • How much friction stands between a good idea and your most important outcomes?
  • What would it take to make the obvious thing easy?

Because when simple wins, innovation follows.

Curious how simple purchasing can be?

Take a look at our APIs right over here, explore Checkout Links, or dive right into building with our NPM Package.