Here are a dozen posts related to startup companies and entrepreneurs over the last week that stuck out in my mind and I thought were worth sharing.  All of these posts get pulled from the News and Blog Posts sections of BigStartups.  If you want to be featured in next weeks Startup Posts of the Week, be sure to add your posts in one of those sections.  

Why do most VCs say "No" - most of the time? - VC Gerry Langeler explains for VC math and why companies, even ones that might have a bright future get turned down.

Startups & Social Equity - There is a strong correlation in societies between the level of innovation and equality.  How startups maybe able to effect social change more than governments.

Who owns what? How to split equity in a new startup company - Damon Cortesi talks about the thought process that he and his co-founder went through in deciding how to split equity and choose titles in UntitledStartup.

iPhoning Your Way To Retirement 70 Cents at a Time (Ignite Seattle Talk) - A great Ignite talk that I saw in December which has now been posted online.  Budding entrepreneur Eugene Lin gives a talk on his search for riches as an iPhone application developer.

Why I feel like a fraud - Jason Cohen discusses the self doubt that him and many other entrepreneurs feel when building a new business, particularly one in a category that didn't really exist.

Business Owners: Spend Money On Loyalty Not Advertising! - "This is not a post about the future of newspapers or other local media. This is a post on reality and what this new economy and the emerging technology have created for the local business owner."

Developing the ability to sell a Strategy - Developing the ability to sell a strategy and have your client see it's value makes it an essential skill to any designer.

11 Surefire Ways to Make Your Startup Fail - Here are just a few ways to completely and utterly dig your startup into the ground, as such read them, and do what you can to avoid them.

A Startup is Not a Smaller Version of a Large Company - Companies go through several distinct stages of growth where they have to operate differently. Trying to run a startup like a scaled down larger company is usually a recipe for failure.

Mechanical Turk can be Magical - Steve Murch of BigOven.com talks writes about the magic of Mechanical Turk and crowdsourcing platforms in general to cheaply and effeciently complete large tasks.

We need an independent invention defense to minimize the damage of aggressive patent trolls - "Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls. Is it possible that one third of the engineering teams in our portfolio unethically misappropriated technology from someone else and then made that the basis of their web services? No!"

How "hard" should your startup's technology be? - Learning to innovate using existing technology. There's no need to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.