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Mashape has a somewhat unusual backstory: The Italian startup spent two years looking for funding in its home country, only to be rebuffed at every turn. So, in 2009, it moved operations to Silicon Valley. The team found funding in less than three weeks. Granted, it was $100K, but it was enough to begin building a real service. Persistence, it seems, is key. (It also helps to have a great idea and position your business in a market that’s on the rise.)
As you may have noticed, APIs are all the rage these days. Twitter attracts 15 billion API calls per day, Google and Facebook were pulling in 5 billion per day as of last year, Amazon currently stores over 260 billion objects in S3, and Saleforce.com receives 50 percent of its traffic through its API. You get the picture. Mashape, which is going into private beta today, hopes to ride this API surge to victory through a marketplace makes it simple for developers to discover, distribute, and consume all things API.
Mashape, which was founded in November by Augusto Marietti, Marco Palladino and Mike Zonca, aims to be a little bit Etsy, a little bit Github by building a unified, all-in-one marketplace where users can find, sell, distribute, and hack on APIs. The platform makes it easy to list any JSON API using its simple wizard and provide it to a community of developers just waiting to get hackin’. Plus, there are 5 auto-generated client libraries, including PHP, Ruby, Python, Object C and Java.
API consumers can use any API listed on Mashape via a single Developer Key and a standard interface, so that once you’ve learned how to consume an API on Mashape, you know how to consume then all. Developers can even test their APIs by using Mashape’s online Test Console.
At this point, Mashape is supplying more than 110 APIs, both published and private, and has tallied more than 22K API searches. The APIs in stock range from stuff that helps you get your homework done to music services and photo filters — and even more obscure APIs like “DNA manipulation” or a “Nitro accelerator”.
“We believe that APIs have no limits”, said Mashape Co-founder Augusto Marietti, “though I still have to figure out exactly what kind of API a ‘Nitro Accelerator’ is”. The APIs listed on Mashape are both free and for charge, and today the startup is launching a simple (and free) tool that enables users to monetize JSON APIs. Once a user has listed an API, they can set up billing with a single click. Users can choose monthly charges, give API call limits, and give a price per additional call. Pretty cool.
For a market consisting mainly of enterprise solutions, the startup’s addition of social layers to its marketplace will strengthen its API community and come in handy for startups and independent developers. By building a social layer on top of APIs, Mashape also hopes to address the discoverability and trust issue through the ability to see what your friends are using.
For all TechCrunch readers looking for a few coupons, go to Mashape signup on the homepage and insert your email address. You will be asked a question to which the answer is “var x”. Add the TC coupon, and voila!
For more on Mashape, check out the video below:
Mitsubishi Electric develops a 19-foot replica of Earth using 10,000 OLEDs, and it looks freakishly good. Read on for photos.
18 minutes.
It took me 18 minutes to download Alma DDB San Francisco CD Raymundo Valdez‘s 261-page PDF detailing every single award and honor he’s received during his 22-year advertising career. Granted, this download was done on a Macbook Air (a “normal” computer might have had more success), but still, that’s a gigantic PDF. Perhaps the biggest PDF I’ve ever encountered, and it even includes photos of the actual awards certificates.
If you would like your own copy of Mr. Valdez’ awards portfolio, you may do so at his own personal website here. We like your work a lot, Raymundo, but do you actually have a physical copy of this printed out that we can take a ruler to? True to the standard, Valdez’ resume is only a page long. But, he may be setting the new standard for how long your “accolades” portfolio can be. Is this lengthy “resume” justified or this egomania at its finest?
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Unbound
Quick Pitch: Unbound crowdsources funding for books.
Genius Idea: Ending the hunt for the next bestseller and the innovation bottleneck that comes with it.
The book publishing industry, says Unbound co-founder Dan Kieran, is broken.
“Publishers spend huge amounts to secure potential bestsellers, but only a very small number of those work out,” he says.
In the quest for the next big seller, authors who are known for one kind of book are encouraged to continue publishing that kind of book. Covers are designed to be eye-catching rather than beautiful. And innovative ideas that haven’t yet proven themselves as sellers can get left in the dust.
Kieran and his two co-founders, who are all authors and/or publishers, decided to rethink publishing in a way that shifts its focus from what might sell onto what readers have already declared they will read. Unbound, which launched on Sunday, allows authors to pitch their ideas directly to readers instead of editors. If enough readers support it — usually between 1,500 and 5,000 — the book will be published. If not, they get their money back.
Readers can pledge their support in different denominations. At the first level, they’ll receive an ebook edition of the book if it is published. At the most expensive, they’ll receive two invites to the launch party, lunch with the author, two signed first editions of the book and two ebook editions.
All supporters get their names printed in the back of the book and access to the author’s “shed,” where they can read updates about the book’s progress, draft chapters and other extras.
So far the platform only has five book proposals listed on it. Former Monty Python team member Terry Jones has pitched a comic book of “cautionary fables” involving machines and novelist Tibor Fischer has pitched two stories. Less than a week in, none of the proposals are anywhere close to gathering enough support to publish. Jones and Fischer have had the most success, each achieving 2% of their goals.
All of the proposals are from somewhat established authors with fan bases that have provided much of the support. Eventually, however, the platform hopes to be more like Kickstarter, which allows anyone to post a project for potential crowdfunding. But then why don’t authors just take advantage of Kickstarter’s already established user base and put their book pitches there?
Kieran says that Unbound provides all of the editing and distribution services of a publishing house, which the more broadly focused Kickstarter obviously doesn’t. That makes forking over 50% of book profits — much less than Kickstarter project leaders take home (95%), but much more than the typical publishing house pays its writers (about 7% to 15%) — worth signing up for. That, and the creative freedom that advance sales create.
“The difference is that because the books have already been sold, it gives an opportunity to change the way they’re made,” Kieran says.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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