I met Oren Michels a few weeks back when he bought my Bruce Springsteen concert tickets from me. He responded to a Craigslist ad I posted offering two tickets to the Bruce concert for about face value. His e-mail signature included a link to his blog, which was of immediate interest to me, which is why I chose to take his offer over others.

We met at the San Francisco Ferry Building and I told him I was selling the tickets because I didn't realize when I purchased them that, save for a few songs, Bruce was going to exclusively be playing his folk material. I had purchased his latest album and didn't like it. After the tickets and cash had changed hands, Oren mentioned in passing that Bruce had actually been playing a few of his classic songs on this tour. I didn't mind, having checked previous concert playlists myself, but did take note of Oren's negotiating savvy.

That should come in handy as he guides his new startup. Oren publicly announced Mashery yesterday. The Feedster veteran is holding back on many of the details but my understanding of it is that it will be a Ning for the rest of us. That is, it will allow just about anyone to create their own mashups using APIs from around the Web.

The company raised seed funding from First Round Capital and angel investors such as Jeff Clavier. If the company can actually allow non-technical computer users to create and host their own Web applications by simply linking existing APIs out there, Oren could be on to something.

For more on Mashery, see:
Oren Michels
Jeff Clavier
Josh Kopelman

Technorati tags: mashery, mashups, vc, venture capital.