Kong CEO’s Startup Grind: From Kalanick’s Couch to API Empire

The Pasta-for-Housing Deal That Kept a Startup Afloat

Before Kong CEO Augusto Marietti built his API management company, he was trading homemade carbonara for a spot on former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s couch. According to recent podcast revelations, this unconventional housing arrangement became crucial during Mashape’s desperate early days.

The Pasta-for-Housing Deal That Kept a Startup Afloat
90 Days to Make or Break
The Door-Locking Negotiation
Living on Rice, Beans, and Tuna Pasta
Contrasting Yesterday’s Necessity with Today’s Fashion

“Travis gave me his place to stay for a few weeks as long as I would cook carbonara for his better half once a week,” Marietti told A16z general partner Martin Casado during an episode of the firm’s podcast. The arrangement highlights just how far founders will go when resources are thin and opportunities hang in the balance.

90 Days to Make or Break

Marietti’s journey to Silicon Valley reads like something from a different era of tech entrepreneurship. After months coding in a Milan garage, he and his cofounders spent their last savings on flights to the US using tourist visas in what he described as a “make or break” effort to secure funding.

“We had 90 days to just make it or break it,” he recalled in the interview. “We knew that if we couldn’t raise, we would go back to Italy broke, and that was it.” The pressure was immense, with the clock ticking on their temporary legal status in the country.

Breaking into Silicon Valley looked very different back then, Marietti noted in his conversation with Business Insider. Mashape’s first big opportunity came after he obtained hundreds of emails from a Stanford entrepreneurship event and cold-contacted every single one. That kind of grassroots approach feels almost quaint in today’s highly structured venture landscape.

The Door-Locking Negotiation

Two weeks before their visas expired, the startup’s fortunes turned dramatically. According to Marietti’s account, the deal that saved them was brokered at Kalanick’s San Francisco home with some of YouTube’s original leadership team, including VP of content Kevin Donahue.

The negotiation took an unexpected turn when Marietti initially rejected the offer. “I don’t want to take this deal, ‘Screw that,’ I say, ‘OK, OK, we’re going to leave.’ And I was very naive, 20 years old, OK, OK, they will come back,” he recounted.

That’s when Kalanick intervened with some tough love. Marietti claims the Uber cofounder warned that leaving would mean never seeing the investors or their money again—and reportedly went so far as to lock the door to ensure the YouTube executives didn’t leave. The dramatic tactic worked, securing the team $51,000 in crucial funding.

Living on Rice, Beans, and Tuna Pasta

Even with initial funding secured, the grind was far from over. Marietti and his cofounders returned to the US on B1 visas that didn’t permit employment or salary, forcing them to survive on just $1,000 monthly for over a year.

Their cost-cutting measures were extreme. All three founders shared a single mattress at an Airbnb, and Marietti’s office became a local Starbucks. Their diet consisted almost entirely of rice, beans, tuna, and pasta—selected specifically for the “right amount of carbs and product at the cheapest way possible.”

The tuna pasta regimen was so relentless that Marietti says he and cofounder Marco Palladino still can’t stand the sight of it today. This wasn’t some fashionable minimalist lifestyle choice either—it was pure necessity in a San Francisco that was notably cheaper than today’s version.

Contrasting Yesterday’s Necessity with Today’s Fashion

Marietti draws sharp contrasts between his experience and today’s startup culture. “Now it’s more a vibe, it’s more like a fashion thing,” he observed. “We would do it just because of necessity.”

The competitive landscape has shifted dramatically too. While starting a company might be technically easier today with more resources available, Marietti suggests the real challenge has intensified. “It’s much harder hiring, recruiting a team, scaling a team, hiring leaders, building an executive team—like building a company that lasts, versus just building a pump-and-dump thing, it’s much, much harder,” he told Business Insider.

His advice for today’s founders? Prepare to work even harder than he did. “So I think the founders today, they’ll probably have to put the same intensity, if not more, because it’s highly competitive and there is probably another 50 startups trying to do what you were doing at that same time—just to grind, to stay ahead and make it happen.”

The story serves as a reminder that behind many successful tech companies lie founders who endured extraordinary circumstances—and that the path to building something lasting often requires more than just a good idea and funding. It demands the willingness to sleep on couches, eat endless tuna pasta, and negotiate with doors literally locked behind you.