While small-scale artisans like Luciano Barbera are going bankrupt sitting in Italy with crates of threads in their ‘spa for yarn’, barely legal Italians exports like Augusto Marietti are already here in the United States of America, pushing the limits of their big ideas in technology and innovation.
If you’ve been coming to our SFNewTech events frequently, you may remember Augusto from our March 17th (2010) event, when he demoed Mashape – a very simple Mashup Engine that helps you create web applications without any coding experience, and that too in near real-time! Three weeks after they took stage, Mashape landed their First Angel Round of Funding.
We met up with Augusto at the July 20th SFNewTech event, and interviewed him for all our readers who may have missed the MaShape demo. We also found out what the Mashape crew is busy doing these days and what their near future looks like.
What is MaShape?
Augusto: MaShape – imagine something like balsamic mockups, but to create real applications (not mockups). We give tools to people to create real apps by assembling different parts of components and software in a drag and drop dashboard to create your own web application.
So, it’s all web applications, not mobile apps?
Augusto: Not yet. We are still in private alpha, so we’re just rolling invites to developers who can create new components and new applications inside a platform.
If I have an idea for a Web site and I’ve created wire-frames with balsamic or mockflow, what do I do next with MaShape?
Augusto: In a couple of months, what you can do is go to MaShape and just assemble a component like a wireframe and then you just publish it and your application gives just an HTML code so that you can embed it on your blog and Web site. In addition to that, Mashape will give you a custom URL (web address) where your application is going to run.
If I design and publish it once, is it dynamic or static?
Augusto: It’s all dynamic. It’s not like HTML. It looks like a real application and a powerful one. You can take signups from people, log-ins from people. You can create a small Facebook type application if you want it!
Is it more like a service for creating Web sites without knowing anything about how to do Web sites?
Augusto: That Web site will run on mobile as well, because it’s just changing the HTML for iPhone and Android. We will go everywhere. Right now, it’s just for browser Web sites.
Where will the mashape app I create be hosted? Do I have to sign up for hosting?
Augusto: Everything you’re going to create is hosted on our server and our cloud computing for free. It’s completely free. Even the bandwidth is free.
What’s your business model? How do you make money or plan on making money?
Augusto: Once you start to get a lot of traffic, you start to pay us. If you are a developer, you want to bring in more components into the platform — I’m going to create a component and I’m going to put a price, like five bucks. If you want that component for your apps, you just pay five bucks to the developers and we take 20% of each transaction between the developer and the buyer.
Tell us a little bit about the company – Who you are, When you formed and what your current situation is.
Augusto: The company was founded in July 2009. We code in Italy in a garage, because we didn’t have any money to come here. When the product was already done, after 100,000 lines of code, we came here in February 2010 and we started looking for money.
We are in private alpha, so we started running our alpha in late March. In April we landed our first angel round funding from early YouTube and Paypal employees. We went back to Italy, got our visas and then we came back here again. I just came five days ago!
With that money, we plan on staying here for one year and improve the alpha based on the feedback and then release the beta so that we can develop this application in late 2010.
Awesome! Who are the Founders of MaShape?
Augusto: I’m Augusto Marietti. I’m kind of the Business Sniper. I don’t want to call myself the CEO, because that is too much for me. The other guy is Marco Palladino. He’s kind of the CTO, but we call him the Tech Mind. The front end developer is 28 years old Michele Zonca. He is – as we call him – a Java Rockstar. I’m 22.
When is it possible for people to sign up and start using MaShape?
Augusto: It’s now possible if you are a developer. If you have tech skills, you want to code new components, you can do that. Just design it and you will get an alpha invite in a week or two. If you are more of a publisher side, a user side, you can sign up now and wait for an invite in late 2010.
You’re planning to launch sometime this fall?
Augusto: The beta launch will be in late 2010 — November or December.