Start-up CEOs often spend nearly all of their waking hours building their companies. Their investors, on the other hand, typically appear once a month for board meetings. So it’s not surprising that some entrepreneurs may feel a little resentful toward their venture backers.

That’s somewhat evident from the new survey, “A Seat at the Table,” which canvassed more than 500 VCs and CEOs at venture-backed companies and asked them several questions about their thoughts on boards. While the results of that survey (see our coverage here)–conducted by the National Venture Capital Association and our venture-capital research arm, VentureSource–show that most CEOs are happy with their venture-capital board members, an open-ended question at the end invited respondents to shed any additional insight…and of the 50-plus comments (mostly anonymous) that came through, a large share touched on this same theme: VCs without operational experience–you know, the investment banker types–add little value on the board.

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Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz has been talking a lot over the past two weeks about Yahoo and how it competes against Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT). Each time she does, I feel like she’s digging the hole even deeper for Yahoo’s prospects in search.

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A week and a half ago, Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton made some news for saying that nothing good had come from the internet, period. Plenty of online sites (including ours) took him to task for that, wondering how one gets to be the CEO of a major content company without understanding the internet.

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Steve Jobs is probably one of the best and most visionary CEOs in the world, and a national treasure. He’s also been sick lately, and I wish him a full and speedy recovery, followed by a return to Apple (AAPL) as full-time CEO.

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In August 2008 we reported on 18 chief executives who use the microblogging application Twitter to clue customers in on new services, help them with questions about their products, and generally get a little bit personal with customers, business associates, and the public.

Not even a year later, we bring you nearly 50 CEOs who find tweeting a personal and professional delight.

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There was a time when the geeks who keep a company’s tech systems running could get by without knowing the finer details of corporate strategy. You called the chief information officer when you needed a server upgrade, not a strategic plan.

Well, those days are over.

This downturn could mean the end of the sequestered CIO–that rumpled executive who, like Scotty on “Star Trek,” has limited social skills and usually emerges from the engine room only when something blows up. In these tough times, CEOs are frequently calling tech chiefs out of the wiring closet and into the boardroom, and putting their business skills to the test.

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What do CEOs say to each other in private? Mean Street intercepted an (imaginary) email sent this morning by Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to Sanjay Jha, newly appointed co-CEO of Motorola.

Dear Sanjay,

Many congratulations on your new job–and welcome to our ranks. It is a rare privilege to be CEO of a desperate company.

I’ve been at it now for almost nine months at Merrill Lynch, and I’ve learned a thing or two that you might find useful.

I hate to start on a sour note, but Monday’s announcement could have been handled better. Your arrival at Motorola was trumpeted a bit too loudly.

“A stunning win for Motorola,” cheered the Wall Street analysts. And your recruitment alone added more than $2 billion to the market value of Motorola.

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Who should be Bill Gates’s technical successor at Microsoft? It’s not CEO Steve Ballmer, who at last month’s D6 Conference admitted, “I am not an engineer.” I’ll say. Steve is a marketing guy who has put other marketing guys in charge of Microsoft. Should it be Bill’s handpicked successors, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie or Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer?

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I’d already filed today’s column and was in fact at home catching up on the morning papers I’d missed in the morning when I came across an excellent piece by the New York Times’ Lisa Belkin on the shortage of women executives in high-tech and related fields.

It’s worth reading, if only because it paints a much more pessimistic picture than my interview with FirstRain CEO Penny Herscher. Belkin talks to a number of women who’ve been fighting the good fight for years.

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