Business Week’s online edition reports this week on the growing trend of VC firms behaving like–and working directly with–angel investors in early stage deals.

From reporter Aaron Ricadela:

“In October, as startup Jaxtr hit up venture capital firms for its first round of funding, it landed an unusual arrangement. Instead of taking a few million in cash from a firm that would hope to one day book a fat return, Jaxtr took a loan—just $1.5 million, from no less than four VC firms and three angel investors. None got the usual perk of a seat on Jaxtr’s board. The result is plenty of independence for Jaxtr, a maker of software that routes calls from blogs and MySpace profiles to cell phones. “You’re still basically on your own,” says Jaxtr Chief Executive Konstantin Guericke, one of the co-founders of networking site LinkedIn.

“Jaxtr’s tale illustrates the new calculus governing high-tech venture capital. For years, angel investors and traditional venture firms existed in a sort of symbiosis. Wealthy tech-industry veterans willing to open their checkbooks for $100,000 or so—the angels, as they’re known—could bootstrap promising young companies before serious money, to the tune of six or more figures, from venture firms arrived. Angling for a slice of Jaxtr, however, were both groups: Mayfield Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Richards, and the Founders Fund on one hand; angel investors Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, and Rajeev Motwani on the other. ‘The company was a bit in the driver’s seat,’ one investor says….

“VC firms on both coasts are responding to the rise of super-angels by seeding startups with more small investments and using loans instead of cash to test ideas from unproven entrepreneurs. In a sense they’re aiming to out-angel the angels. The theory is that the investments take less legwork than nurturing companies through traditional rounds of funding, letting VCs get in on promising projects without much risk.”

More importantly, this trend gives young firms greater latitude, control, and time to reach their goals before entering the institutional investment grind that can often prove to be the equivalent of giving steroids to an athlete–great early results leading to a quick exit, but also hidden structural damage that only becomes evident much later in a company’s life.

You can read the rest of Aaron’s piece here. This could be exactly what the market needs to develop the next generation of strong, healthy, in-it-for-the-long-run companies.