* Update: Dave McClure has a kickass, chest-thumping war-cry to rouse any dejected entrepreneurs. The only thing to fear is FEAR itself. Read it here before you go on to sobering stuff below.

Is the end near? How do we delay the deaths of our startups? Perhaps.. even survive?

5-6 years ago, Silicon Valley’s overinflated tech egos caused a market crash. This time, its someone else but the result is the same. Except, there are warning signs this recession could turn out to be longer and more painful.

As blood pressures of startup CEOs increase and their hairlines recede, venture capitalists are out hoping to save the day — by providing good advice… and early justifications on why they will not return your call for the foreseeable future. ;P And these are the nice ones, we hope you have better luck finding guardian angels..

Sequoia Capital has a very long but comprehensive 56-slide presentation on all kinds of economic indicators that explain what this recession means in a macroscopic view. The middle and ending slides focus on what startups can do about it, with case studies of some tech companies.

Then, there’s Benchmark Capital, with a more readable and honest-to-goodness advisory piece (on TechCrunch) on what startup founders should do and pay attention to. For the benefit of those of you who dun have time, copy and paste the following and save it as your wallpaper for the next week. These are words of wisdom from a 2003 startup CEO who laid off 78% of his staff and lived to tell his IPO success story…

1. You don’t realize how fast things spin out of control. There are self?
reinforcing negative affects in a downturn.
2. Don’t spend money until you have to
a. Don’t move out of your office until you are sitting on top of one
another
b. Don’t hire any incremental employee until you just can’t stand it
c. Don’t get more capacity in your data center until your site is going down
3. Better to be “late to the party” than to be early and run out of money
4. Line item review of the budget every month (legal, accounting, everything)
5. Not just a CEO mindset, but a company mindset
a. Everyone must buy into the process
b. But in a calm way – not run for the hills
6. Create 2 or 3 different burn scenarios – know at any point in time how many months of cash is left.