Investors Resume Funding Online Startups Investors are making a cautious return to online startups.

If you missed the first internet wave, it may not be too late. Working with new business models and boosted by investors' growing appetites for dotcom startups, a second swell of online enterprises is emerging.

Venture capitalist Sam Jadallah of Mohr Davidow Ventures in Menlo Park, California, says that since media giant News Corp. paid $580 million to buy fast-growing online community-builder MySpace.com in 2005, entrepreneurs have been working feverishly on internet business plans they hope will appeal to consumers, investors and potential buyers.

Another reason for the return of interest in the internet: affordability. "The cost to get into business and experiment is dramatically lower than it was in the first boom," says Jim Fowler, 41, CEO of Jigsaw Data Corp., a San Mateo, California, company founded in 2003 that helps members buy, sell and trade business contact information. Open-source software, offshore programmers, commodity-priced servers and other elements of internet infrastructure are better developed, better understood and less costly than before, Fowler says.