The summer of 2009, a 21-year-old from Rome named Augusto Marietti finished tinkering with a startup idea in a Milan garage, convinced himself it was worth betting everything on, and bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. His co-founder Marco Palladino came along. Together, they had $600 between them and 90 days on tourist visas before they'd have to fly home broke.
The startup was called Mashape - a marketplace where developers could buy and sell APIs. Nobody in Milan could explain what APIs were, let alone fund them. Silicon Valley was different. They pitched at TechCrunch50, which got them in the room but not in a hotel. Housing was solved the way most early Silicon Valley stories get solved: through a Craigslist ad.
Travis Kalanick - then an angel investor, not yet the Uber CEO - had posted an offer to host visiting founders in his home. Marietti and Palladino got the bedroom. The rent arrangement was simple: Aghi would cook carbonara for Kalanick's wife once a week. The Italian immigrant and the startup ecosystem struck a deal on pasta.
Six months later, Marietti was back at that same kitchen table - this time negotiating a $100,000 convertible note with early YouTube employees. Not glamorous. Completely effective. That's been his operating mode ever since.