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Twitter is often hailed as an exalted success story whose footsteps should be followed by young startups. While Twitter is certainly a successful break-out company that managed to shoehorn an innovative social communication into our already busy lives, there are plenty of things Twitter has done wrong that startups should do their best to avoid lest history repeat itself. Co-founder Jack Dorsey fielded questions during a brief discussion at DEMO in Santa Clara, California Tuesday and explained Twitter's early missteps and how to avoid them.

This weekend, venture capitalist and avid blogger Fred Wilson pointed out an interesting blog post written by Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood. In the article, Atwood explains how his company takes advice from Charles de Mar - a character in the 1985 movie Better Off Dead - who rather bluntly tells a first time skier to "go that way, really fast." Atwood says his company has focused mainly on speed, and believes speed of iteration is more valuable than quality.

Yesterday we went over some the ways entrepreneurs can set themselves up for success with VCs by building a relationship far before they ever need funding. Part of that strategy involves picking the right VCs based on experience, success and, yes, even how well you get along. There are several factors that should be considered when finding the right VCs for your startup, and Atlas Venture partner Fred Destin reminds us this morning of another significant one - how a VC manages reserves.

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.

One of the big debates in the venture capital industry lately has been the growing argument between so-called "super angels" and traditional VCs - the former being prone to mention how they feel the latter "sucks." As one would expect, many voices in the industry have made themselves heard in the form of VC blog posts and passionate, profanity-laced shouting matches. But when the fog of war clears, what should startups take away from the debate? Should they seek investment from VCs or super angels? Or both? Thankfully, some level-headed perspectives have emerged that are aimed at helping young startups interpret the lessons to be learned.

There is a fascinating article online this morning from the San Francisco Chronicle's Tom Abate in which he profiles Raymond Lei, a 19-year-old Berkeley student and entrepreneur. While still in high school Lei founded ooShirts.com with just a computer and an idea. A few years and just a couple thousand dollars in capital later, Lei runs a successful 2.5 person team set to earn over $700,000 in 2010. Abate dubs ooShirts an "ultralight startup," but is Lei's bedroom business any different from a lean startup?

Anybody who's ever managed a project, whether online or off, knows how invaluable a Gantt chart can be.

For project managers looking for a Web-based alternative to the industry standard Microsoft Project for creating Gantt charts, one option might be Gantto, a Y Combinator-funded startup that recently went into private beta.

In a post last week about how to measure the effectiveness of startup employees, we mentioned that perhaps the number of hours worked isn't the best metric. With that said, this weekend was Labor Day weekend in the U.S., one of the more popular get-out-of-town weekends of the entire calendar, but does that apply for entrepreneurs and startups? Certainly there were some die-hards out there that refused to leave their desks this weekend, but we still wanted to know - do startups labor on labor day? I polled Twitter over the weekend and got some interesting responses. Here's what you had to say.

Montreal-based entrepreneur and blogger Ben Yoskovitz knows a thing or two about hiring employees at startups. Yoskovitz formerly founded his own company, Standout Jobs - a tool designed to improve hiring and recruiting techniques for small businesses on the Web. Needless to say, the hiring and performance tracking of employees at the SMB level is a topic of interest for Yoskovitz. One of the items he recently wrote about is whether startups should hire workaholics expected to work 80+ hours each week, and some interesting arguments against this doctrine emerged.

College hiring is projected to rebound in time for the Class of 2011 to feel its effects, according to a new survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). Employers who took part in NACE's survey say they're anticipating hiring 13.5% more new college grades from the Class of 2011 than they did from the Class of 2010. And in general, just under 48% of those responding said they plan to increase their hiring, while 40% say they expect to maintain the hiring levels. Good news for those stepping into the job market after graduation this spring.

We've written before about the things to ask yourself as to whether or not a job at a startup is right for you. But if you think your post-graduate plans involve life with a startup, then there are a number of things you can do, while still in school, to prep.