Back in the day I worked for two startups, and I’ve come across both of their founders’ names attached to new projects. The first is Martin Eberhard who started NuvoMedia, makers of the Rocket eBook. They were acquired along with SoftBook Press, so I got to work with a bunch of NuvoMedia folks. Anyhow, his new company is Tesla Motors which has been written up in Wired. Basically it’s labeled as Silicon Valley’s first car company, making electric cars. Seems that they run on huge stacks of rechargable batteries. Pretty sweet idea as in this day an age of expensive gas, global warming, and Ford and GM on the ropes, there’s a definite appeal to applying modern technological know-how to building cars. The market already seems to be shifting from SUVs to more fuel-efficient cars. It’s a pretty big gamble, and an expensive bet.

The second founder is Chris McAskill, whom I spied on an unfortunate Valleywag post. He ran Mightywords which I worked at for a while. Anyhow, his new project is Smugmug which is a photo sharing service. I haven’t tried it out but it has a definite polish (especially in the galleries) which I remember from the Mightywords days. I think another smart step is keeping the staff small: 15 employees.

I personally think one of the “innovations” of Web 2.0 is the trend of companies keeping their costs down. Technology seems to be such these days with open source, web standards, and sharing of information that one can create a pretty cool, interactive site with not much money up front. One of the stereotypical things that went wrong with Web 1.0 is too many companies thought they had to expand their payrolls quickly and blow millions on advertising. This practical, common sense approach will also allow such small companies to survive possible future downturns.

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