Internet entrepreneurs

When Alicia Navarro began casting about for a memorable name for her new company, she confronted a brutal reality. All her brilliant ideas for an Internet domain name were taken.

"I came up with so many gems, only to be devastated to find that the domain name was not available," Navarro, a former executive at Vodafone, said. "It means that Internet entrepreneurs are having to come up with ridiculous words to name their businesses -- Twango, Yugma, Stikkit, Rootly."

Amazon Web Services, or more simply AWS, provides a wide range of web services for building technical infrastructure. It's not a replacement for having an ISP (or a data center, if your firm is that large), but it's a great way to avoid spending too much money on infrastructure before you even have a proven business model. It's also a brilliant way to scale up resources on demand, even if – and sometimes, especially when – you already have a successful business model.