[thinkingemote]

My impression of Aral was that he was a startup founder but in the FOSS / Privacy world. He stood out for that reason. I saw him talk at a very small conference in the UK and he seemed to be genuine and believed what he said.

In other words startup founders evangelise to attract attention to grow fast and to try to get lots of VC funding. FOSS / privacy folks are more humble and quieter so it's very rare to find the loud enthusiasm more common to be found in the valley. Often there is no need to sell the idea and to stoke the hype up when it comes to volunteer organised open source projects. FOSS people tend to be in it for different reasons, in it for the long haul, or in it even if no one is interested.

The risk with any startup founder is that to be "lean" they have to be able to drop their products at a moments notice to try another one. The Small Web idea seems to be an minimum viable product idea and like any idea isn't without value but its possible that it might be more risky to invest time into it compared to a traditional open source idea? (or is it, maybe it will get more interest...)