In recent years, venture capital has simply not been available for software start-ups focused on desktop applications, programming tools or, in your dreams, operating systems.

Open Market Inc., an 18-month-old software start-up, hopes it will soon be its turn at bat.

Cheap brick and miser's windows, it could have housed an industrial tool maker, a software start-up, a real estate broker.

Many Internet companies and software start-ups continue to operate, having cut back their budgets to try to survive.

In addition, many of the entrepreneurs served in elite technical units, gaining skills that they use now in software start-ups.

If we'd been in Silicon Valley, I would have pegged these guys for the founders of a software start-up.

As an example of the iterative nature of a work system's life cycle, consider the sales system in a software start-up.

Its president and chief executive is Robert A. Kotick, 30 years old, but a veteran of small software start-ups.

The casual, college-dorm camaraderie, the open setting with no private offices and the huge monitors on most desks are more typical of a software start-up.

But his last job ended in March 2001, shortly before the software start-up where he was working closed.