For Mashape CEO Augusto Marietti, the Silicon Valley dream is playing out as well as could be imagined.
In 2009, Marietti and his co-founder Marco Palladino — who’d formed a software company in Milan a year earlier — learned of and were accepted into TechCrunch50, a pitch competition that has evolved into today’s giant TechCrunch Disrupt events.
As the event approached, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick — then an active angel investor who was just beginning work on the ridesharing service — posted an ad on Craigslist, offering his home to founders coming in from out of town. Three teams responded; Kalanick chose Marietti and Palladino, providing them a bedroom for a few days and, more importantly, a lifeline to Silicon Valley after they returned home. Indeed, Marietti says he was back in California six months later, negotiating $100,000 in convertible notes with several early YouTube employees at Kalanick’s kitchen table.
At the time, Mashape had just $2,000 in the bank. Fast-forward, and today, San Francisco-based Mashape has raised $28 million in funding, including a fresh $18 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation…