i split my time between MMO talks and entrepreneurship sessions at this year’s Game Developers Conference. The conference had a fair number of sessions featuring CEOs who discussed how they went from owning small startups to riding around in limousine hot tubs. i also attended a series of roundtable discussions called “Start-up Survival Stories”.

These talks actually turned into “Start-up Horror Stories”. Here’s a sampling of the hair-raising tales people told:

My receptionist embezzled tens of thousands of dollars from me and moved to a different State.

i licensed and localized a game from Korea, and my North American publisher went bankrupt. i couldn’t do anything with the game because i didn’t want my publisher’s creditors to take the license away from me.

After we’d built our studio and hired our staff, our investor pulled out and took off with the money.

And so on.

What i found really interesting were the rags-to-riches stories told by successful CEOs in other panels. It was neat to see the common threads running through these sessions, which i present presently as a present to you:

Equity does not mean equality. Four successful CEOs were assembeled for Lessons from the Front Lines: Startup CEOs share their Insider Stories. 4/4 CEOs agreed that when starting a company, it’s not always the best policy to give everyone an even split. What happens when, in a year or two, Founder A is doing 20% of the work, but enjoys 50% of the company equity? Crabby and opinionated Erik Bethke, founder of Korean virtual world startup GoPets, suggested that a keen lawyer can help you set up your company so that shares are handled more fluidly. Shares can be redistributed as time wears on to more accurately reflect the contributions of the founders.

Hire good people. “i only hire people who are smarter than me.” So said Paul Wedgwood in his lecture Splash Damage: From Amateur to Triple-A in Five Years. This was echoed in a few different sessions as “‘A’ people hire ‘A’ people, but ‘B’ people hire ‘C’ people.”

Fire bad people. When the same four CEOs were asked what one mistake they learned from, they all said the same thing: they let poor performers stay at the company for too long. Get rid of people when it’s obvious that they aren’t a good fit for the company. There seemed to be a lot of untold, painful stories as the panelists winced and grit their teeth, imploring the audience to keep good personnel policies. Craig Sherman, adopted CEO of hit online community Gaia Online, said that this was tough to practice. He suggested paying outgoing staff more than their due to keep everything amicable, and to prevent ousted employees from bad-mouthing your operation.