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Does your startup company culture really matter? It sure mattered to Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, as we noted last week, who describes in an article in Inc, the battles he waged with investors who dismissed his efforts to cultivate a supportive, worker-friendly environment at the company. The importance of preserving that company culture, Hsieh suggests, led in part to his decision to sell his company to Amazon.

It's not uncommon to hear the relationship between investors and entrepreneurs described in terms of dating or marriage. As VC Nat Goldhaber writes in a VentureBeat guest post, "Venture capital, at its core, is the business world's equivalent of a long-term, nearly inseparable, relationship. You are marrying your investor." And Bplans.com founder Tim Berry describes investors as spouses. "This is important," he writes. "You're much better off with no investment than with incompatible investment. Incompatible investors is as bad a situation as incompatible spouses."

Okay, so you'll have to file this one under "future weekend reading" because this book isn't out yet, but I thought I would provide a bit of a heads-up post in anticipation of what should be a very interesting read. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose is written by Tony Hsieh (pronounced "Shay"), CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos, and lands in bookstores in early June. Hsieh helped to create one of the most successful online retailers which was well known for its stellar customer service and which eventually was acquired by Amazon.

In 2007, Wired Magazine published an article entitled the See-Through CEO where Redfin founder Glenn Kelman gained the public's sympathy and a slew of new members by blogging his corporate woes. Lately we've been looking inward at how companies can improve their employee recruitment strategy through social media. Great candidates research you before accepting an offer, and here is what your social media profile reveals to them.

While 2009 continued a downward trend as one of the worst recessions in U.S. history, the decline for venture-backed mergers and acquisitions has not been as severe as the dot-com bust in 2001 and 2002.

New figures from the National Venture Capital Association show that in the last quarter of 2009, M&A hit $7.8 billion, up from the previous year's mark of just over $2 billion. Overall, 2009's total of $12.6 billion could not match 2008's $13.6 billion total.

If you ever thought startup life would be about champagne toasts and million dollar term sheets then you need to get back in your time machine and set the dial for the nineties. If there's one thing we learned in the latter half of this decade, it's discipline. To say that it was a tough year, would be an understatement. But those of us who stayed lean will be back for 2010. While the below concepts weren't invented this year, they certainly hit their stride in 2009.

Beloved online shoe retailer Zappos has announced it will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon in exchange for almost a billion dollars worth of Amazon stock. Both of these companies are interesting because they have mastered making the connection between a quality online experience and physical delivery of tangible goods offline.

Is this just a story of a big online shopping mall buying up a hot little online shoe store? Taking a closer look at the offline supply chain of each company indicates that there may be more to this deal. Some supply chain analysts believe that the two companies are actually radically different, but complementary, and their union could help Amazon both change the way it relates to its customers and reach a whole new group of customers willing to pay more for a high-quality user experience. This is a story of two different ways of selling things on the internet and delivering them to your door.

Last week at the TED conference, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur held an informal interview with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (pronounced Shay), whisking him away to a bathroom to learn more about this forward thinking company and the man social media experts are calling the master of customer experience.

We've embedded the video at the end of this post, but these are a few of the highlights.

Back in the days when you used to have to walk into a video store to rent a VHS tape, I would go through the same thing every week. After spending what seemed like hours wandering, I would set my tape down on the counter. This was the clerk's cue to sigh heavily and shake his head. Then he'd quietly pick up my tape, walk away, and return with three or four completely different films. Over and over, this happened, introducing me to an eclectic mix of cinema which, without those helpful clerks, would have remained hidden.

When movies came to the online world, I always had hopes of rekindling that magic virtually, but more often than not, I wound up checking out the wrong video. Now, a new service proposes to change that, by bringing the video clerks back into the mix. Meet Clerk Dogs.