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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For fast-growing technology start-ups, there are many approaches to employee hiring and retention.

Two of the more successful ones, Facebook and Zappos, have very different methods, each with different goals: Facebook wants to hire entrepreneurs even if that means they will eventually leave, while Zappos wants to hire the best people to fit its culture and figure out how to keep them.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, said at a talk this weekend at Startup School, a Berkeley, Calif., event organized by Y Combinator, that Facebook seeks to hire entrepreneurial “hackers”–people who want to build something new–even though they may not want to stay for long. The company is focused on technology and tilts its hiring toward engineers, even for people in non-technical roles such as marketing, he said.

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Sylvester Chisom began paying a consultant last summer to blog on Twitter, post status updates on Facebook and run marketing campaigns on both sites for his auto-detailing business.

He thinks the service, which costs $450 a month, is worth it. “It’s just better having somebody else dedicated to thinking of stuff to put up,” says Mr. Chisom, co-owner of Showroom Shine Express Detailing LLC in St. Louis.

Some small-business owners, overwhelmed by the time commitment required of marketing their products and services via social media, are hiring consultants to lend a hand. But the price of such support can vary widely based on the extent of work involved, and many entrepreneurs with already meager resources for marketing and advertising may need to think carefully before taking on the extra cost.

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Here in New York, there’s no shortage of networking opportunities for entrepreneurs. The “city that never sleeps” is teeming with conferences, happy-hour meet-ups and business-plan competitions for start-ups.

That’s all great, says local venture capitalist Warren Lee, but what’s missing are straight-talk lectures by successful entrepreneurs giving practical advice about the grittier side of starting up a company.

“The start-up world sort of glamorizes how cool being an entrepreneur is,” Lee said. “But people are putting their lives on the line. They’re mortgaging the house and not talking to their wives or husbands because they’re working 100 hours a week. It’s not glamorous.”

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The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to “the cloud”–that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centres.

Here’s something you won’t see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes.

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As eBay Inc. (EBAY) looks to offload Skype, the executives who sold the Internet telecom firm to eBay have formed the hub of a European network of investors and executives that they hope will rival and even exceed the one in Silicon Valley.

The sale of Skype to eBay for an estimated $3.3 billion in 2005 became renowned as one of Europe’s great venture-capital successes, with more than half the sale price going to employees, according to estimates based on filings for the Securities and Exchange Commission and in Luxembourg. While those kinds of gains have been seen in Silicon Valley, they were practically unheard of in Europe, making Skype alumni stars among European tech entrepreneurs and giving them a cachet in the U.S. that few Europeans could match.

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Every spring, fertilizer runoff from the U.S. Mississippi River floods into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a massive algae bloom that leads to a giant oxygen-deprived “dead zone” where fish can’t survive.

Now, this annual problem is getting new attention, not from marine scientists but from entrepreneurs looking for a new domestic source of fuel. And one start-up sees fish themselves being part of the process.

The algae blooms are spawned each year as the farmland runoff from as far away as Montana flows into rivers, eventually reaching the Mississippi and flowing into Louisiana bayous and out into the Gulf of Mexico.

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Silicon Valley-ites have had a tougher time getting rich for much of this decade because their normal routes to huge fortunes–the sale or IPO of their startup tech companies–have been crimped by new regulations and poor market conditions, which have worsened in this recession.

Now some outfits are trying to step into that wealth breach. On Thursday, a New York company called SecondMarket said it would offer a new avenue where owners of private company stock can sell their shares even if the startups haven’t gone public. This private company marketplace will allow venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and startup employees to sell their stock to angel investors, secondary buyers and others who are interested in buying into their privately held firm.

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It’s easy to write about what the government or other people should do with our/their money. It’s harder to come up with a course of action that I can undertake on my own that possibly, somehow could make a difference. My first inclination is always to try to look “for the next big thing.” But the next big thing is just that–next. It’s not now. It’s Venture Capital. It’s not self-funding, renewal capital.

Rather than trying to be a Venture Capitalist, I was looking for an idea that hopefully could inspire people to create businesses that could quickly become self-funding. Businesses that just needed a jump-start to get the ball rolling and create jobs. I’m a big believer that entrepreneurs will lead us out of this mess. I just needed a way to help.

So here it is. Some people will love it, some will hate it. It is what it is.

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They kept their Twitter feeds quiet and their iPhone cameras dormant. Most of them didn’t want their names to be used.

There was more than a little bit of paranoia in the air as the guests arrived at last weekend’s Summit Series event, formally the Young World Leaders Summit–not the most modest of names. It was a gathering of about five dozen under-35 entrepreneurs and executives at a beachfront luxury resort outside the glitzy vacation city of Cancun. Among those present at the retreat, which was fully paid for by sponsors, were a handful of executives from Facebook and other Silicon Valley start-ups, media and publishing entrepreneurs, young venture capitalists, edgy youth marketers, and jet-setting global issues advocates. As for an itinerary, there were snorkeling lessons, ample pool-and beachside chill time, and plenty of parties.

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It would seem we’ve got all the makings of a tech shipwreck.

In the past few days, Xerox (XRX), Yahoo (YHOO) and eBay (EBAY) each announced plans to cut thousands of jobs. Esteemed Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital is warning entrepreneurs that it’s time to batten down the hatches because the good times are over. Start-ups Adbrite, imeem, Seesmic and Zivity are each laying off at least a quarter of their employees. We’ve been here before, and it looks ugly.

Or does it? Listen to execs at some high-flying companies on the other hand, and you get a somewhat different outlook. Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs this week told investors he plans no job cuts, and he’s “not tremendously worried” about Apple’s outlook.

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