With the credit crunch, it seems inevitable that upstart companies will face challenges getting fresh capital. Yet, as seen with recent deals – such as the $28.7 million financing of Digg – there is still interest from investors.

To get some insight on all this, I had a chance to interview Thomas O'Keefe. He runs a cool site called Bizak, which helps value Net startup companies.

No doubt, O'Keefe knows the space fairly well, having founded a variety of companies (like WiredAlumni.com and Research Connect) He was also a financial equity analyst at Thomson Reuters.

Now, to the interview.....

Q: Some background on Bizak?

A: Bizak gives equivalence to startups so investors and entrepreneurs can make equal comparisons on their earnings potential and business valuation. I founded Bizak so entrepreneurs could compute the financial performance of their startup, compare their performance to industry averages and research profitable industries for future ventures. The premise for Bizak came from the earnings per visitor metric (EPV) which allows startups to equally compare their financial performance to other startups on a per visitor level - in essence the EPV creates an equal comparison irrespective of traffic volume.