Enroll in an academic program, make friends with some of the other really smart students, drop out of school with them to create a company, work 80 hours a week and one day, ka-ching! This is the startup formula to success that the media would have us believe — the new American dream, as it were. Granted there are some notable entrepreneurial dropouts who have made it big, among them Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs and more recently, Mark Zuckerberg. But while many of us are familiar with the paths they’ve taken, such paths are simply not the ones most entrepreneurs walk down to ultimately find success.

Every so often, venture capitalist Larry Cheng puts out a list of the top VC blogs. Previously, he ranked the blogs by how many subscribers they have on Google Reader. But now he’s changed his methodology and is ranking them by average monthly unique visitors, based on Compete data. He just came out with his new global ranking for the fourth quarter of 2009. Below are the top ten blogs from that list.

If you compare this list to the last one, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is now the top VC blogger, followed by Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures (who previously was No. 1). Now, the always-provocative Paul Graham of Y Combinator is No. 3, whereas he wasn’t even in the top ten on the old list. Other new entrants to the top 10 include Mark Suster of GRP Partners, Dave McClure of Founder’s Fund and soon to launch his own seed fund, and Bijan Sabet of Spark. Some VCs who dropped out of the top ten include Marc Andreessen and David Hornik of August Capital.

Four VC blogs in the top ten are new under the Cheng’s method, which better captures which ones are capturing attention since it is based on an average of the last quarter’s audience. Of course, this method does not capture people who read the blogs via RSS. So pick your poison. You can subscribe to the Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, or Top 100 on Google Reader, if that’s your thing (can someone create corresponding Twitter Lists for these VCs?).

Cheng is a managing partner at Volition Capital, which was Fidelity Ventures until it was spun off on Monday. His own blog, Thinking About Thinking, ranks No. 12.

Top 10 VC Blogs (Average Monthly Uniques, 4Q09)

1. Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, A VC (100,279)
2. Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, How To Change The World (82,838)
3. Paul Graham, YCombinator, Essays (71,924)
4. Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Feld Thoughts (45,633)
5. Mark Suster, GRP Partners, Both Sides of the Table (39,389)
6. Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital, Above The Crowd (23,084)
7. Dave McClure, Founders Fund, Master of 500 Hats (21,462)
8. Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital, Redeye VC (12,972)
9. Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital, Bijan Sabet (12,451)
10. Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, LSVP (12,097)

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Fred Wilson

Companies:

Etsy, Union Square Ventures, Outside.in

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years…In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments… Learn More

Guy Kawasaki

Website:	guykawasaki.com
Companies:	Truemors, Visible Measures, SlideShare, Garage Technology Ventures, Simply Hired, BitPass, FilmLoop, NowPublic, TicketLeap, Nononina, Alltop, SocialToo, oneforty, Bootup Labs, TwitHawk, and more

Guy Kawasaki is CEO of early-stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and an active blogger. Guy was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, CEO of ACIUS and founder of Fog City Software. Guy has written eight… Learn More

Paul Graham

Companies:

Y Combinator, YCombinator

Paul Graham is a partner at Y Combinator.

He is also the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb,… Learn More

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