This is part of my ongoing series Startup Advice .  I I like to say to first-time entrepreneurs, picking a VC is more permanent than marriage.  If Keeping a blog has been great because so many entrepreneurs have written me with questions about their companies and I’ve gotten to know many of you personally through the process.  In In these many exchanges Beware of VC Seagulls, who shit on you and then fly away (or worse yet leave you with Red Herrings) I write this post as a warning to pick your VC’s carefully.  I

TechCrunch Europe ran an article in November of last year that European startups need to work as hard as those in Silicon Valley and I echoed the sentiment in my post about the need for entrepreneurs to be maniacal about their businesses if one wants to work in the hyper competitive tech world. Having been through this all before myself I would like to tell a cautionary tale that can happen to the best of us: The Yo-Yo life of the tech entrepreneur.  TechCrunch ran my article yesterday as a guest post but I wanted to have a copy here for anybody who missed it and for future readers of this blog.  This

In March 2007,  when Pownce launched, Twitter didn't have much of a head start. think, if I were to do a new start up or a different company, I would pick it in an area where there wasn’t such good competition, determined competition. think there is definitely different levels of start ups and Twitter was definitely (laughs) a good start up, and it's really hard to compete or be compared to. We talked about more than Pownce and Twitter in this interview. Leah Culver is a developer who launched many projects.

So he went off to launch his own startup. The company he started is only about 2 years old, but he already made enough mistakes to nearly shut it down. They started out developing Facebook apps. Noah said they "were a top five developer with seven million users, so we actually started having investors come to us. If you like this interview, vote for it on my favorite news site . --Andrew Andrew

So he went off to launch his own startup. The company he started is only about 2 years old, but he already made enough mistakes to nearly shut it down. They started out developing Facebook apps. Noah said they "were a top five developer with seven million users, so we actually started having investors come to us. If you like this interview, vote for it on my favorite news site . --Andrew Andrew

He has a really interesting background as a product manager and now an entrepreneur. Tell me a bit about your background. Like many product managers, my background is fairly eclectic. That's where I learned I enjoyed interacting with customers and working with development teams to build and launch products. From there, I became the first non-founder employee at an e-commerce startup called BITSource, which was the first electronic software distributor delivering electronic volume software licenses to corporations. Visible networking is turning into a really great opportunity to get to know people better, get to meet new people, and have some interesting conversations.

Heres 5 steps to start exploring: View Get introduced: About this blog, why entrepreneurs and marketers recommend it » Write me an e-mail and let me know what youre up to! The first 6 steps to homegrowing basic startup analytics Comments Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen Analysis on viral marketing, user experience, game design, and online ads As

This month’s “Startups Uncensored” will be on “Getting Your Internet Company Bought”. It will be an open and frank town-hall conversation revealing the metrics and measurements for Mergers and Acquisitions in the online space with one of the best experts in the field. We are joined this month by Shawn Colo , the Co-Founder and Head of M&A at Demand Media . TO SIGN UP FOR THIS EVENT, CLICK HERE Shawn created the original concept for Demand Media and executed the simultaneous acquisitions of eNom, eHow and several domain-name portfolios which launched the company.

Here are some recent great posts that I’ve come across that generally fall in the intersection of startups and CTOs. Enjoy. Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff. Of course, one of the best ideas around this is to have Negative Customer Acquisition Costs .

I recently got together with Aaron Shechet and an early stage startup to discuss the direction the company might want to take. It was a great conversation and I thought it would be a good idea to do some visible networking with Aaron to get to know him better. Tell me a bit about your background. I grew up in Los Angeles and went to undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, graduating in 2003 with Honors in Economics. While at UC Santa Barbara, I then went to Pepperdine University School of Law and graduated in 2006 with a Certificate from the Geoffrey H.