Box.net

Founded: Started last year by Mercer Island 20-year-olds Aaron Levie -- a junior business major at the University of Southern California -- and Dylan Smith, a junior economics major at Duke University.

Employees: Three full time, with three contractors.

Financing: Backed with just under $500,000 from Seattle angel investors and Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks.

Business: Online storage that allows computer users to upload photos, word documents and other files so they can be shared with friends, family members and co-workers.

How different than Web 1.0: "If you want to send someone a file, they can just subscribe to your RSS feed and then they will get an update every time you want to send a file to them," Levie said.

What about Google: "Now that people have an accurate understanding of what Google Base is, I think we are a little bit safer. It seems that they are working more on the commerce and classified type of business, rather than upload your files and share them with the world," Levie said. "We are still a private environment. Google Base, if you are going to upload files, you are going to be sharing them with the world, and our site wasn't really founded with that purpose."

The Web 2.0 hype factor: "There are a lot of similar companies being introduced right now and I am not sure what the future is going to be for a lot of them, because these big companies can only acquire one of every type of service."

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