In a year in which tech companies have struggled to stay alive, Apple’s stock has doubled.

In January of 2009, Apple stock was priced at $78. Last week, it closed at $184. Also late last week, three major investment firms elevated their expectations for Apple. On Thursday, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner increased his target price for Apple from $185 to $210, while Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig increased his target from $185 to $220. On Friday, UBS analyst Maynard Um jumped on the Apple bandwagon, and raised the bet, escalating Apple’s target price from $170 to $265.

A 236% jump in stock price from January to October would be remarkable for any company. But in the case of Apple, it happened under the most bizarre of circumstances.

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Few people take the plunge and turn that Web startup idea into reality, and making a viable business out of it is even harder.

That’s why we had this idea to sit down with people who have launched Web startups within the last couple of years and pick their brains. We’re hoping these little Web startup Q&A sessions will be both inspirational and interesting, and plan on making them somewhat of a series over the course of 2009.

First off is Allen Stern, who many know from his blog, CenterNetworks. He is the founder of CloudContacts, a Web startup that launched last year. Allen was kind enough to let us pick his brain about his startup and Web startups in general.

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In 2008 the stock market fell into shambles, the real estate market tumbled, big companies announced big layoffs, VC investors became more careful, and the entire world economy went downhill. It’s enough to put a sour face on the most optimistic person.

But now contrast this with what happened with the Internet in 2008:

• The number of websites increased by 20%.
• The number of domain names increased by 19%.
• Not to mention that there were more than 1.4 billion people on the Internet, a number that will keep growing.

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IDG.se, the largest source for IT news in Sweden, published an article today with the title (translated) “Pingdom could become synonymous with uptime.”
The article mentions how Pingdom is increasingly being used as a source for uptime data in various international IT magazines and websites. The analogy they use is how Alexa.com has become famous as [...]

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Sam Nurmi, founder and CEO of Pingdom, has been profiled as one of only 15 people in a new book about entrepreneurship (the interview actually took place way back in October). The book contains plenty of good advice and is part of an initiative to inspire and stimulate budding young entrepreneurs and will be freely [...]

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