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?

In recent years, lean startups have become a popular sector of Internet businesses that look to push a product at "low burn." A lot of what makes a lean startup lean, according the man who coined the term, Eric Ries, is when the company strives to create value for customers. "Every activity that does not contribute to learning about customers" should be defined as "waste," Ries says.

The braintrust at Greentech Media suggested I write an article on the top ten solar venture capital firms. Even despite what Sanjay said in this article.

As I started writing, I realized that the normal metrics for grading VCs -- IRR, quality of exits, etc. -- don't apply to today's solar investors, at least not in any meaningful way.  The fact is that very little, if any, of the billions of VC dollars put into solar in the last few years have yielded the type of results that VCs look for. 

Suddenly, everybody wants to be an early-stage startup investor – an "angel."

People you may have heard of doing it include Chris Dixon, the Hunch cofounder, Zach Klein, the Vimeo creator, Shana Fisher, the IAC M&A boss, Ashton Kutcher, the actor from Dude, Where's My Car?, and Joshua Schachter, the Delicious founder.

That's just a few. There's an army of them.

More established VC types – and some of the angels – want to get into a debate about whether all this is good for startups and if it means there is an angel "bubble."

Bor-ing!

Editor's note: This post is based on a rant Chris Dixon posted to his posterous account.

Dixon details the changes he'd like to see in the world of venture capital. We're republishing it here, with permission.

Dixon is CEO of Hunch, as well as a successful early stage start-up investor. (A famous, fancy VC told us last week that Chris is the "Ron Conway of New York.")

I've been pondering the "truths" we hold dear and wondering whether or not the mental models we were taught in college and graduate school hold up under the changes occurring in our economy. Do the great business thinkers of the past twenty or thirty years and their models and descriptions hold true, especially when we introduce innovation into the mix? Over the next few months I'll look at a couple of the models we hold dear and place innovation within the context of the model, to see if the model is extensible enough to account for innovation, or whether we may want to revise our thinking to account for innovation.

A patent myth is loose in the land about their importance to innovators and those that finance them. In, fact, recently the New York Times published an op-ed titled “Inventing Our Way Out of Joblessness.” The authors, Paul R. Michel and Henry R. Nothhaft, argued that the best way to jump-start our moribund economy was for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to get through its backlog of patents.  Their premise is that the more patents are granted, the more jobs will be created in the U.S.  Unfortunately, their logic is flawed and biased.

Mr. Michel and Mr. Nothhaft’s claim that “three-fourths of executives at venture capital-backed startups say patents are vital to getting financing, according to the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey” is simply not true.

The Burn: Stuck on first base with a sense that the outcome of the game is entirely out of your control.

The diagnosis: “I will start working on my career goals once I get my degree.” “When I have more experience I will begin.” “I’m waiting for the right time.”

Some people have difficultly discerning a determinant from an excuse. The preceding comments are excuses, as are most explanations we assert. Humans are masters of deception, especially self-deception. Unfortunately, most of us first believe our own negative propaganda before objectively seeking facts and the result is often inaction. After some thought we will notice that the majority of excuses connote intentions of waiting for “more appropriate” or “better” circumstances. This, of course, is a very costly fallacy.

The United States is not currently a hotbed for tea, compared to say, England, but the market for tea in the U.S. is growing in small pockets throughout the country in the form of tea houses and premium tea and coffee shops. One entrepreneur, in particular, has cornered the organic, fair trade tea market in the U.S. and that is none other than Joshua Kaiser of Rishi Tea. I caught up with Joshua and his friend Wang Geda, the founder of one of China’s only organic, fair-trade tea companies, Yi Select, at the Hong Kong International Tea Fair. Kaiser shares his reflections on carving out a niche market in tea and what it's like to pioneer organic, fair trade tea in the motherland of tea, China.

Of organic tea, Kaiser says, "In America, it's the fastest growing section of the tea industry." But the United States is not the only one demanding progressive teas from organic and fair trade farms. "The market for organic tea is emerging in Asia at a very rapid rate. When we look at the young market, the young consumers in Asia in Hong Kong, Singapore, and all over Southeast Asia, we see a trend for organic, green tea and some emerging awareness of fair trade."

Do you have a million-dollar idea that could revolutionize how the government works?  Now there’s a quick easy way to get your idea in the right hands – and maybe walk away with a cash prize for your effort.

The White House has announced the launch of their new website, Challenge.gov, a portal for everyday citizens to offer solutions to the nation’s biggest challenges. The site is an extension of President Barack Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation, which opens government solutions to the general public.

On Challenge.gov, entrepreneurs, leading innovators and citizen solvers can compete for prizes by providing novel solutions to tough problems and, at the same time, take pride in engaging with their government to advance national priorities.

The EAI was created by a community of leaders from industry, research, and policy making organisations to address Europe’s future competitiveness through innovation within ICT enabled areas. The grassroots nature of the community provides for a democratic representation of ideas and an empowering environment. This powerful dynamic creates the potential for sustainable growth.

Fairly or not, Steve Burrill’s reputation in Minnesota will rest a great deal on whether he can deliver the $1 billion investment fund to back the Elk Run BioBusiness Park in Pine Island.

He says he’s close, but in this global economy, nothing is a done deal until the documents are signed and the check clears the bank.

However, fund or no fund, Burrill said the state already has benefited from his interest and his checkbook. In an exclusive interview with MedCity News, Burrill said he has provided much-needed early stage capital and expertise to Minnesota-related companies.

When ReadWriteWeb profiled Montreal last month as part of our "Never Mind the Valley" series, it was clear that the city had a thriving entrepreneurial community. And today the Montreal startup scene gets stronger with the announcement of the launch of Year One Labs, a startup accelerator program.

The program is founded by four entrepreneurs - Raymond Luk, Ben Yoskovitz, Ian Rae, and Alistair Croll - who describe themselves as "operators, not armchair quarterbacks. We've been in the trenches." The program will utilize the "lean startup" methodology and be focused on a "rigorous process of customer development and iterative adjustment."

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.

The startup ecosystem has long accepted the "all day, every day" methodology toward building a company, especially at the early stages. When you think you have a great idea you don't want to stop working on it, and young entrepreneurs will work during every spare moment to hasten the progress of their idea. That's great, and many successful entrepreneurs have done just that, but should that translate to your employees once you begin expanding?

The bus, which the company calls "Solarve," is equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels, LED lamps, and a system for viewing the surroundings of the vehicle.

"This is the world's first public bus that is equipped with solar panels," said a representative of Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, which supplied the PV panels.

As you work to develop your product - before and after launch, it's important that you use more than just "gut feelings" to ascertain what's working and what's not. Along those lines, last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of Carsonified offered a list of six key metrics for your web app and how to track them.

It's a great list - with definitions, calculation methods, examples, and even a link to a Google spreadsheet (see below for link) that you can use to input your own data.

Venture capital database VentureDeal this morning released complimentary VC Funding Quarterly reports, covering the second quarter of 2010. Let’s take a look at the report TechCrunch readers are likely most interested in: the world of the Web, digital media, software and ecommerce.

During Q2 2010, VentureDeal reports (PDF) that 366 companies raised a total of $2.1 billion in venture capital funding for those sectors, up 17% in total funding amount compared to the first quarter of this year and an increase of 30% in the number of companies funded.

All four sectors showed gains in funding amounts and number of companies funded.