ReadWriteWeb

A majority of the advice aimed at helping startups manage relationships with venture capitalists is tailored for when that startup is raising or has raised funding. Certainly a lot of the interaction between startups and investors takes place during and after financing rounds, but there is a lot entrepreneurs can be doing before they seek funding to set themselves up for success with VCs. In a response to a question on the Q&A site Quora, VC Mark Suster offered his advice to entrepreneurs on how to manage relationships with VCs before fundraising begins.

XING founder Lars Hinrichs has launched a new pre-seed investment company, HackFwd.

Although HackFwd provides financial support and mentorship to tech startups, HackFwd is not an incubator. In other words, rather than expecting startups to relocate to the company's headquarters in Germany, HackFwd meetups will be distributed - something that might be very beneficial for European startups.

In February, Portland, Oregon Mayor Sam Adams announced the city would put $500,000 towards a seed fund to help encourage regional startups. And on Friday of last week, the Portland Development Commission announced it had finally chosen the five local business leaders to help launch the fund, predicting it would be "open for business" by the fall.

Over the weekend, startup accelerator TechStars announced a partnership with Startupbootcamp, a Copenhagen-based incubator and the very first member of a new global affiliate program hosted by TechStars. With programs in Boulder, Boston and Seattle, TechStars is now expanding and "open sourcing" their incubation model by providing guidance and support for independent international startup accelerators. A TechStars presence in Europe, in any way, shape or form, is a positive step for seed funding in Europe, which - as we've discussed earlier - is in dire need of growth.

A settlement for nearly 2,000 years, London is today the most populous greater metropolitan area in Europe with over 13 million residents. Home to popular tourist locations such as Big Ben, The London Eye and Buckingham Palace, London's skyline is unmistakable. While London often serves as the representative bridge from Europe to the United States, it also is the seat of Europe's rapidly expanding entrepreneurial landscape.

The London startup scene saw its first major consumer Internet success in 1998 with LastMinute, a travel site similar to Expdedia that eventually traded publicly on the London Stock Exchange beginning in 2000. UK companies like LastMinute were largely able to avoid the doom and gloom of the dot-com bubble burst at the turn of the century due to the nature of the venture funding scene.

If hardcore hackers had any doubts whether the real-time web was a legitimate development environment, Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham is dispelling them. In an interview with Graham, ReadWriteWeb learned that the entrepreneur-turned-investor issued a "Request for Startups" (RFS) asking for ideas from companies utilizing Twitter and Justin.tv's live video API. Groups who are accepted to Y-Combinator and fall under these categories will be given "priority access" to Twitter and Justin.tv.

Last night at a reception to kick off New York's Internet Week held at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the mayor of New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced NYC Seed, a seed-stage technology fund for NYC-based companies that seek to "express their original ideas through software and web-oriented technologies." Bloomberg, who is made his fortune as the founder of the Bloomberg financial news and data company, has said in the past that he intends to turn New York into a hub for tech innovation. "My company never would have been remotely as successful if we had tried to put it in any other city," he told reporters gathered at his mansion according to CNET.