LAUNCH is a two-day event taking place on February 23-24, 2011 at the San Francisco Design Center. Organised by Jason Calacanis with the support of Google and Sequoia Capital, LAUNCH will showcase both new startup technology companies and new products from more established technology companies. Startups can apply to be among the companies to present at LAUNCH here. Alternatively, LAUNCH promises to be a terrific networking event for startups, venture capitalists, angel investors and technology companies in general. For more information about the event, including how to get tickets, visit LAUNCH.

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According to Deloitte & Touche LLP, raising capital is key to fast growth among technology companies.

Deloitte recently revealed its 2010 Technology Fast 500™ list of the fastest growing North American technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies, based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2005 to 2009.

You may have heard of the angel investment ‘scam’ where startup companies have to pay to pitch their companies to potential ‘angel’ investors. But have you heard of the venture capital investment scam where a so-called VC firm invests someone else’s money in a startup… in order to screw both the investor and the startup out of the money?

This kind of activity may be foreign to places like Silicon Valley where fake VC firms would be quickly outed and ostracized by the legitimate venture capital community. Unfortunately, it’s the very thing that tends to thrive in places that lack a strong VC scene, where startups are desperate for attention (let alone investment), and there is a lot of institutional money looking for places to invest.

Do venture capital firms routinely fire founder-CEOs and replace them with ‘professional’ CEOs? Or do the founders voluntarily hand over the CEO reins, so they can focus on other aspects of the business? Or do they often leave to start other companies?

Such simplistic ‘either/or’ options rarely apply in real-life, of course, but we can say that 27 (54 percent) of The Wall Street Journal’s 2010 top 50 VC backed companies have non-founder-CEOs, while 23 (46 percent) have founder CEOs.

Want to know how much venture capital your competitors have raised? Check out Stealth Mode Watch, which enables you to find out about the latest funding rounds made by companies including privately-held firms and startups.

Stealth Mode Watch lets you find details of the Regulation D filings that companies must file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) whenever they raise capital from outside investors. These details include the names of the investors, and the amount and date of funding.

Startmate has launched as an Australian based seed fund and incubation program aimed at funding and mentoring a small number of Australian technology startup companies.

Launched by a group of Australian technology investors and entrepreneurs, Startmate is modeled on such programs as the U.S. based Y-Combinator and TechStars.

Expanding on the U.S. originated Y Combinator / TechStars approach to providing seed funding and mentoring to technology startups, Germany based HackFwd is a new 12 month program for tech based startup teams in Europe.

Lars Hinrichs founded HackFwd to provide startup teams with up to €191,000 (around USD $231,000) in seed funding plus a range of mentoring and professional services, in return for 27 percent equity in their ventures. Lars Hinrichs is an accomplished entrepreneur, having previously founded the European social network Xing, which he sold in 2009 to German media company, Hubert Burda Media, for $57 million.

U.S. based TechStars, which runs a three month mentoring and seed investment program for tech startups, has gone global. TechStars’ CEO David Cohen recently announced the company’s first global affiliate, Startupbootcamp, which will run a similar three month program in Copenhagen, Denmark.

To date, TechStars has run its program three times per year in three U.S. locations – Boston (Massachusetts), Boulder (Colorado) and Seattle (Washington). The three month program involves TechStars providing about 10 startup teams per city with hands-on mentoring, professional services, space to work, and up to $18,000 in seed capital (in return for 6 percent equity), to help them launch their company and initial product.

Floodgate is a new venture capital firm aiming to bridge the gap between traditional angel investors and venture capital firms.

Managing partner Mike Maples, Jr. along with partner Ann Miura-Ko, will implement a ‘super angel’ strategy of investing seed amounts of between $150,000 and $1,000,000, and then helping companies:

How effective are seed funding and mentoring programs at producing successful companies? And do these business acceleration programs beat good, old fashioned ‘two guys/gals in a garage’ (or bedroom, or dining room, or kitchen) in terms of their success rate?

Ever since Y-Combinator began enrolling startup technology and Internet companies into its seed funding and mentorship program 10 years ago, more and more programs have sprouted across the United States to give entrepreneurs the opportunity to convert their ideas into businesses.