Silicon Florist’s links arrangement for August 01

Dharmesh Shah writes “I have been tracking Y Combinator (a new kind of venture firm for early, early stage startups) for several years. They have a distinctive approach to the early-stage funding process and have funded some interesting companies. YC is in the news again because of Google’s recent acquisition of Omnisio, a YC investment.”

Via the Test blog “ather than point out that the idea is not a new one, or shoot it down in flames, I thought I’d look at the idea from three perspectives – the people who might need a Tech-Hub, the people who might run it, and the people who might fund it. In my experience, its the overlaps and (more importantly) the differences between the needs of these three groups that most schemes like this don’t plan for, and find difficult to accommodate.” (Hat tip Michael Richardson)

Dawn Foster writes “I’ve been doing a few presentations about online communities recently, and I finally got around to uploading a few of them to SlideShare. I thought people might be interested in seeing them.”

An Analysis of Online Messaging, Fundraising and Advocacy Metrics for Nonprofit Organizations at AboutUs on August 26.

Vancouver-based Iterasi gets the startup spotlight in The Oregonian this week. “A personal Web archive that allows people to save Web pages on Iterasi’s server. The personal accounts can be searched and shared with others.”

My favorite “That’s a Portland company?” startup, SurveyMonkey, gets covered by the Portland Business Journal. “Their Pearl District office may be festooned with stuffed monkey dolls, a string of monkey lights, even a monkey-face door mat. But Chris and Ryan Finley aren’t monkeying around.”

One, two, three… take advantage of the unique industry convergence at SXSW 2009. Maximize your experience by registering now.