As we profiled in our Never Mind the Valley series last month, New York is increasing its stronghold on the east coast startup scene. The city’s rich media and international business ecosystems make it the perfect launch pad for startups looking to leverage these markets. One other reason the city has seen successful growth of entrepreneurship is the holding company Betaworks , which shows no signs of slowing after raising $20 million from Intel, AOL, RRE Ventures and several others.

Last week we talked about managing split teams with Danny Wong of Blank Label , a site for creating custom men’s dress shirts and a startup in the growing field of co-creation. These types of startups, which have gained more traction overseas than in the U.S., run on a model of on-demand production, which allows them to become cash-flow positive in a relatively short period of time.

When Sigma Partners’ Richard Dale posted a video of a random dancing guy to his Venture Cyclist blog I was skeptical. I’d seen the original video sans narration and dismissed it as a strange sociological phenomenon condensed into a quick three minute clip. Nevertheless, when the same video is narrated by MuckWork and CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, it provides some valuable leadership lessons for entrepreneurs.

The best way to reduce bounce rates and design a path of least resistance for members and customers is to offer something they want. While others prioritize member acquisition in order to build an early product test case, Sean Ellis has a slightly different philosophy.

Because today’s startup generally requires significantly less seed capital to function, the legal contracts once required for large-scale deals are no longer appropriate. Rather than forcing startups to draft lengthy legal documents, one attorney is offering an invaluable resource to entrepreneurs. Best known as the Fenwick and West attorney responsible for Twitter , Ted Wang recently released a series of templates to help startup companies navigate the difficult task of investment financing.

When a startup entrepreneur tells the story of his/her mistakes and how they’ve corrected them, it’s endearing. When an investment associate for one of the more prestigious VC firms does it, it’s surprising.

Just because you’ve been in talks doesn’t mean the deal is done. Entrepreneurs need to remain diligent about timelines in order to ensure that the deals they’ve set in motion actually come to fruition.

On Wednesday, BusinessWeek released their list of the top 25 angel investors in the tech industry, naming Hunch co-founder Chris Dixon ahead of veteran angels Ron Conway and Reid Hoffman. Conway and Hoffman are two of the most influential angels in tech, and have invested in some of the largest Internet companies known today, including Google , Facebook , Twitter and Digg

While so much of the startup scene is funded by investment capital, it’s tough to know exactly where all of that money comes from. In chasing the power behind the investment throne it’s easy to believe that everything conspires by the hand of the Illuminati and leave it at that. As of today, Volition Capital’s Larry Cheng spells it out for us in perfect clarity.