Ex-Feedster Scott Johnson has an interesting podcast entitled The Young Engineer’s Guide to Startups. It gives a nice overview of the startup life, especially things like equity and the 'risk to reward ratio'. The latter can be summarized as: the earlier you join a startup, the higher the risk... but also potential reward. Other tips: the less cash you take when you join a startup, the more reward you potentially get; startups are "problem-solving paradises"; delay the valuation if possible. All of which are handy tips if you're thinking about starting a company, or joining a startup. 

I learned some new terms too - like "vomiting in the data center" :-)

Interesting to note that Scott has a new startup called Ookles, while his old company Feedster is busy doing damage control over at TechCrunch. Incidentally, Feedster does have a point when they say their business is RSS-based and so it's not quite the same as Technorati - something we went over back in July 2005 when I did my own Alexa charts damnation post. All the same, I think Feedster would help their cause if they promoted some of the business arrangements they have - e.g. didn't they do a deal with AOL in June last year? What's the latest on that and other RSS-based business that Feedster does?