Nathan Casey

Nathan Casey, who co-founded Jobvana after losing his job at Washington Mutual last year, has scored additional funding that he will use to continue marketing and developing the social networking service. Launched last summer, Jobvana helps people market their skills and find local service providers.

In this tough economic climate, it's a compelling idea. That's partly because with the number of layoffs occurring across the country people are looking at new ways to turn a passion or hobby or special skill into a job. As part of that, Casey said people are looking at creative ways to build their personal networks.

"We see more of the unemployed becoming self-employed, and others trying to do more work on the side to supplement incomes," he said. Of course, Jobvana faces challenges from LinkedIn and other larger social networks where people are spending more of their time.

Hawkeye Investments, the personal investment firm of former Nextel Partners CEO John Chapple, led the deal. That followed a $500,000 bet that Chapple made on the startup last year.

Casey declined to say how much money Chapple invested this time. But Chapple -- a former McCaw Cellular executive and current board member at Yahoo -- is getting more involved with Jobvana as a strategic adviser.  

Casey, who co-founded the company with former WaMu employees Steve Alseth and Jason Hellberg, said that  losing his job was the spark he needed to do something new. Despite the influx of cash, Casey said he's keeping things lean. That means meetings at Krispy Kreme for five cent coffee, rather than Starbucks.

"As all companies, we are definitely watching expenses as closely as we can, but we are fortunate to already be operating with very low overhead," he said. As our company was born in these times, we feel already adapted."

And that speaks to a conversation I had the other day with a venture capitalist. Those companies that are born of this era, might actually become very strong companies. More on that later.