API Management Platform Mashery Closes On $10 Million, Doubles The Number Of Mashery-Powered Apps

It was just over a year ago that API management company Mashery was touting its $11 million Series D. Today, the company is announcing $10 million in new funding, led by OpenView Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Cisco, Formative Ventures, First Round Capital, and .406 Ventures.

As a reflection of the growth of web-based businesses, the number of developers using Mashery’s service has been booming. In 2010, there were just 35,000 developers in Mashery’s network. A year later, there were 100,000. And today, Mashery says its network now has 160,000 members.

That’s equivalent of 30% growth over the past year, the company reports this morning. Also growing, its SaaS-based API management platform which has seen 272% growth in traffic year-over-year. The number of applications built on Mashery-powered APIs grew over 75% year-over-year, currently totaling 50,000. That’s double what Mashery was seeing last May, for comparison purposes.

“As you can imagine, given the explosive growth in the mobile and app worlds and the need for APIs as the ingredients of apps, we’ve grown a lot,” Mashery CEO Oren Michels says. “We’re now 90 people and have offices in SF, NYC, Boston and London. As we support larger and more complex API programs, our product and service offerings need to continue to expand to maintain our leadership and serve our customers. This round will fuel that.”

Alongside news of the funding, the company highlighted the massive growth in APIs over the past year in general, which it called the “most aggressive growth to date.” According to API catalog ProgrammableWeb, API volume doubled three times faster in 2011 than in 2008. By May, it reported a 15% increase in enterprise APIs alone. Mashery notes that it works with many of these companies, including 10% of the Fortune 100, and 150 brands like ABC News, Choice Hotels, Cisco, ESPN, Harper Collins, Intercontinental Hotels Group, USA TODAY, Expedia, Travelocity, Klout, Rdio, Comcast and more.

As before, it’s not only the growth in “desktop-sized” web businesses that are fueling Mashery’s growth – mobile plays a big factor here as well. Apps, and particularly those on iOS and Android are creating demand for more APIs.

“When we started, there was no iPhone or App Store or Facebook platform – and although I’d love to say we were eerily prescient and predicted all that, we didn’t,” Michels admits. “But we did know that companies need to work in partnership with others to grow, and that there was a better, faster, and more frictionless way to do that, through APIs. We see similar evolution in adjacent areas, and we’ll be investing this capital to capture that market as well,” he adds.

And, as he points out, it’s very hard and expensive to grow and succeed if you don’t have an API platform. ”Being a platform allows you to leverage services and/or distribution built by others, he says. “If you’re not a platform, you need to build all those services and fund that distribution yourself.”

Mashery says it’s planning to use the new funding to expand its platform, operations, sales and marketing forces. So, everything. And yes, that means it’s hiring.

I think Michels’ earlier quote (which I loved) also still holds true, and even more so today than ever before: “People used to sit at a desk to ‘Internet’. Then they would get up and stop Internetting. Now they Internet wherever, whenever — even when they don’t think they are doing it.”

Note: Updated with more comments from Michels, following initial publication. Mon. 11 AM ET.