Mark Fletcher is the CEO of Bloglines, and that makes him someone worth listening to. He gave a presentation, titled “From the Garage: Lessons Learned Birthing and Building Web Start-Ups”, at the recent ETech conference. Some bloggers have posted highlights from his presentation.

I found this story via ITNorthWest Voice via Andrej Gregov’s Weblog. Read Andrej’s post for the highlights.

Of course, Mark also has his own blog, wingedpig.com, where he has noted some of the coverage of his presentation. He has also put a copy of the presentation online (PPT), due to popular request.

Why I blog this? Andrej’s highlights from Mark’s presenation are solid, and while most of it was not new information to me, one particular item did catch my eye: Outsourcing small projects to eLance.com — where contractors bid for your work.

I had never heard of eLance, and had not given much consideration to using contractors during the startup phase. But during startup, I really want to keep all my dedicated employees working on the real gold of the company. I could see value in outsourcing some of the small projects that are not make-or-break, but still need to be completed.