This past week was a pretty significant event in the web2.0 world - at least to people who follow startups and Techcrunch. This week was the equivalent of the web emmy’s for startups, called the Techcrunch 50. Most startups presenting had absolutely no business model. Except one that really stood out. And, it not only stood out, but the guys at Yammer took top prize.

I’ve been a pretty active twitterer for quite awhile now. It’s quite addictive and impossible to explain. Here’s one way we discussed today at the office in an attempt to explain it:

• Phone calls are for urgency
• Emails are for content and detail
• IM is for immediacy
• SMS is for quick confirmations
• Blogs are for news and commentary
• Wikis are for knowledge sharing
• Twitter is for casual, micro conversations

With so many different ways to communicate, and so much more information available at all times, it’s becoming very difficult to manage our digital lives. However, on the other hand, we have more and more tools at our disposal.

If you don’t twitter, it’s probably hard to understand. I’d urge you to try it — but I warn you: you’ll probably hate it initially and give up quick. But, it’s one of those transformative events that will happen and you will “get it”. It’s OK - some people never get it (and shouldn’t). Others get it pretty much right away.

Yammer gave me one of those a-ha moments this morning. When I heard about Yammer, I thought, “hmmm…. that’s very interesting and obvious”. I signed up (it was a great experience) and invited a few people around me. They all joined within a few minutes. I started yamming (what do you call it?) — and within not too long — I decided to invite the rest of our employees. Within a few hours, everyone had joined (except one person who was traveling). And by the end of the day today (remember, we signed up mid-morning Pacific time), we had already had 11 members, 3 tags and 105 posts.

Yammer is twitter - but for business communications. It essentially is a clone; with finer control and a decent revenue model. With Yammer, you can use it for free. However, if you pay $1 per user per month, you unlock a number of enterprise features such as access control features (IP ranges), custom logos, etc.

Yammer will be a very powerful internal tool for communication - especially for passive information that can be followed or produced as desired. It’s much less invasive than email, a lot less urgent than a call, and provides a nice way to organize content across the company.

It’s especially nice for distributed teams like ours. We have people now in Atlanta, Texas and California. This is a nice way to bring everyone together in ways that aren’t possible with email or phone calls. It allows everyone to participate in cross-concerns across our organization.

Congratulations on the Yammer team. This is a great product.

As a parting note, there are others that are clamoring for this market as well. One that announced a little prematurely, namely because of Yammer’s announcement this week, was Present.ly. I haven’t been able to do a review yet of their application, but it looks similar and they seem to have quite a number of nice features as well and they’re ready to rumble. Ahhh, the fighting entrepreneurial spirit is so refreshing.

So, if you already twitter or are now considering it: you can follow me on twitter for random, sometimes useless, sometimes interesting tweets. You never know what might happen….

OK, this is a shameless plug, but what’s a blog for?

We’re announcing our Fall Appcelerator training schedule today.

We’re going to be offering training in Atlanta, San Francisco, Minnesota, Chicago and NYC.

We’re also partnering up with Frank Cohen from PushToTest to offer some AJAX testing as part of the training.

In addition, our Minnesota training will be led by author of the upcoming Manning book: Appcelerator In Action, Kevin Whinnery. Kevin has been a very active member of our community.

So, if you’re thinking about adding web2.0 or AJAX capabilities to your website or already knee deep in loads and loads of Javascript and need some relief - consider coming and let us show you an easier way to do it. Building great apps doesn’t have to suck as bad as it does without Appcelerator.

Also, if you’re a PHP lover and use Zend - one of the most awesome Zend frameworks around - you might consider checking out our Zend/Appcelerator Webinar event on October 15th. The title: ‘Get “Rich” Quick : Building Ajax-based RIAs with Zend Framework and Appcelerator’.

We’re also sponsoring the upcoming ZendCon next week in Santa Clara, California (September 15-18, 2008). If you’re planning on attending, please stop by our booth and we’ll give you a free t-shirt!

A bunch of the usual Atlanta suspects (Sanjay, Lance, Steven, Scott) have just announced Startup Gauntlet. I love the name. Pitching is like being in a gauntlet.

Your pitch probably sucks — they all do. It takes a lot of going around and around to hone your pitch and most importantly, become confident in what your pitch is. You have too many slides, too much text on each slide, you’re trying to cram 3 hours into 30 minutes. That’s just how it is. Pitching to VCs is much more of a art than a science. It takes lots and lots of practice (read: failures) and a bunch of luck. But most importantly, you have to iterate and get it down to a few key slides that convey your message.

Remember: the goal of the meeting is to get another meeting. And ultimately, you can get a close. Don’t try and answer every question possible in your slides — you’ll fail. Don’t try and cram a bunch of information on the slides for them to read, they can’t.

Slides should act more like an outline of the discussion. They should help you direct the conversation in a flow. But, in most cases, if you’re getting through the slides in an orderly fashion — you’re probably doomed. If they’re REALLY interested, you want be able to get through your deck.

Some of the best pitches I have done were one’s where at the end of the meeting, I was still on the 2nd or 3rd slide.

It’s not about the deck, stupid.

Think less is more when you put your presentation together.

I like to think in these terms:

• Who are we? (The team is 85-90% of the investment)
• What’s the problem? (Why do we need you?)
• What are we doing? (The solution to the problem and how’s it unique)
• The plan (The how and when, what are we doing today and what will we do with the money)

I’d suggest no more than 8-10 slides. You should put very little text on each slide. Instead, frame the topic transition with a bold and short title: “Our Team” Then, 4-5 big bullets. Watch out for the small text, you can’t read it.

Another tip: watch out on the contrast of your presentation. I once was pitching in the valley and was at a really big VC — really well know. I was my first introduction to these guys. They had really really cool offices with big logos of really well known Internet companies. I went into one of their conference rooms - and they were very nice. White everywhere. It was like being in a palace, literally. Then, they pulled down the backdrop (out of the ceiling) for the projector and it was white. And it was a bright and sunny day (even will shades turned).

I pulled up my slide deck, and I had a white background. FAIL. The contrast wasn’t too chipper and my deck was white washed out with everything else in the room. Completely impossible to have predicted this. But, as an entrepreneur, I was able to get around pretty easily by just quickly opening up the master and changing the colors. Lucky for me, I had followed the tips above and had simple text and only 8 slides.

A few other things to consider:

• You like your idea way more than anyone else
• There’s a lot you have even considered. Don’t try and have all the answers, it’s OK.
• A lot of the questions are more about how you react and think about the problems, less about their point of view.
• You’re wrong about the numbers
• You’ll need more money than you think
• You’ll need to hire a lot more people than you believe
• Fundraising will take you a lot longer than you’d like
• Most likely, fundraising will almost destroy you’re business (time, money and distraction)
• It will be emotionally draining — highs and lows
• If you’re traveling to raise money (out of state), and you think you’ll be able to do “regular business” around it, you’re probably fooling yourself. I would also try and do some
• You’re idea might not be that unique
• You need trusted advisors around you that have your vested interest and can help you as a sounding board
  Make sure you take into consideration the people you’re pitching and talk to them on their terms and background — do your research!
• Time is on the VCs side. You need competition, a compelling event (not running out of money!), something to get them off their butts to move. They’ll move fast if they think they’re losing a deal. Don’t push your luck here, though.
• It’s about execution. Results speak much louder than good intentions and plans

And the last and probably key tip I’ll leave you with: DO NOT EVER PITCH OVER THE PHONE. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. If you can’t meet them in person, you can’t read their body language and build a relationship with them. Sorry, pitching over the phone doesn’t work. You will get hit up on this and let me give you some tips for this. Most likely, they’ll have their analyst want to screen you if you’re not getting a really strong, warm intro to a partner (or you’re getting a cold call). This is a weak sign, but one you may have to deal with. In this case, I would suggest you try and keep it at a very high level, almost act disinterested (but not a dick!). I would tell them you’re really focused on trying to build the business and would love to meet them sometime, but you’d prefer a face-to-face once that time is right. They’ll still try and get a bunch out of you, ask for your pitch deck or other materials, etc. Depending on what you have and at what stage, you can consider sending them some stuff. My recommendation is to never send them your pitch deck ahead of time. If you have a plan (which I would recommend is really very short as well), send that. Push for a face-to-face with a partner. If you can’t, your chance of success (and time suck) is much less. DON’T EVER TRY AND SEND A POWERPOINT AND PITCH OVER THE PHONE. You’ll be sorry you did. Trust me!

I really love this video as a reminder of how many great men and women before us have served our country. During the discourse of the political process, it’s always important to keep in context to the greater cause of people before us that have served. I love the United States and I’m proud to be an American.