Business Rockstar host Ken Rutkowski dubbed Comunicano's Senior Strategist, Bill Ryan, "The Master of the Message" and I often refer to Bill as "Senor Story" as Bill has refined the art of the story with his 20 plus year deployment of "The Architecture of Identity" to a razor sharp focus around what today is known as the Brand Narrative. That's how "the story" can be told and retold by others as if you told it yourself over a variety of mediums. But it doesn't start or end with "the deck."

To us, there's the "deck" which is a series of "talking points" and then there's the "leave behind" which is much more complete and which has a lot more information shared. Sadly largely due to PowerPoint usage over time the "deck" and the "leave behind" have too often become one in the same and the misapplication of each is at a point where it's gotten ridiculous.

Well a holy war is breaking out over the idea of the "story" and "the deck" with investors. Our first two stories are each worth a read….and then you can decide what's best for you.

People love stories, not decks

Jason Calacanis recently invited me to speak on the topic of presenting to potential angel and venture investors at the Launch Incubator Spring 2015 class in San Francisco. In preparation, I asked some friends in the industry for their pitch advice.

In Defense of the Deck

My partners and I have noticed an interesting trend over the past few years: an increase in the number of entrepreneurs who prefer to pitch us without the use of a presentation deck. On one hand, this is totally understandable. Many believe that PowerPoint decks are emblematic of the type of bureaucracy disparaged in Dilbert cartoons.

Another bun fight is making the rounds, and this is about MONEY. The question posed over the weekend started in the New York Times about how many angels should a startup take on. Now VC's who are well regarded are making sense out of the discussion. I'm siding with Upfront's Mark Suster's views simply because he presented relevancy in his post.

For Start-Ups, How Many Angels Is Too Many?

Shortly after presenting her start-up to potential investors at a conference, Nancy Hua was bombarded by eager suitors. A little more than 48 hours later, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur had amassed about $2 million from wealthy individuals known as angel investors. The total number of angels that Ms. Hua raised money from: 21.

How Many Angels is the Right Amount for a Startup to Have? | Bothsides of the Table

If you follow the Twittersphere you may have noticed several people weighing in on this recent piece by Mike Isaac of the NY Times, asking " How Many Angels is Too Many?

Crowdfunding is far from dead. And, TILT, with their latest raise has proven that there's money coming into the company. I guess though in light of the news today, I wonder how many angels they had and just what story they told in their deck….NEXT

Tilt Raised Around $30M At A $400M Valuation In Its Most Recent Funding Round

TechCrunch is hearing from sources that Tilt has raised around $30 million in its most-recent funding round as it pushes to expand internationally. Much of the company's ambitions this year are set on its international expansion as it continues to grow in Canada – where it launched last year and is growing faster than Tilt did in the U.S.

Logitech, one if the most hallowed names in hardware, is changing their name to LOGI. Back in 2008 Comunicano client SightSpeed was acquired about a year before LifeSize was also acquired. Today's news focuses all about the hardware and gear that Logi is known for leaving me to speculate on the future of the software side of things at Logi. Smart money would be on a spin out…….

From the start of the SightSpeed acquisition and then the LifeSize one, all I've heard is how the fit that seemed "so LOGIcal" just wasn't working. Add in that Logi has a really deep "hardware culture" you can quickly see why software, especially with two early companies that understood SaaS models long before others did, would be struggling to grow inside there. Then add in the fact that leadership of Logi wasn't really local and things just didn't happen as planned.

Logitech Is Changing Its Brand Name To Logi For… Reasons, At Least On Some Products

Logitech is older than I am. Not too much older, mind you – the Switzerland-based computer accessory company was founded in 1981 – but old enough that I can remember my dad using a Logitech keyboard on the home-built desktop he ran on a desk in the closet, back when having a computer in the living room was still a social faux pas.

With the new Apple Music, the integration of Beats into it and lots of competition in the streaming music space, Spotify is trying to keep Apple from taking their one-third bite of the "apple" so to speak by suggesting people subscribe not via the app, but via their web site. Spotify knows Apple can't be anti-competitive so this is a rather smug move. Smug until Apple pulls their next rabbit out. Patents. Between Beats and iTunes Apple has loads of patents, and a war chest to buy up many more that are surrounding the streaming and real time download business. But then again, a healthy Spotify is also good for the music business as the labels of tomorrow are no longer WEA, Columbia, Mercury or Polydor. They are spelled APPLE, SPOTIFY, GOOGLE, etc.

Spotify urges iPhone customers to stop paying through Apple's App Store

Spotify is trying to raise awareness around the fact that it's cheaper to subscribe on the web instead of through Apple's App Store. The leading subscription music service plans to email iPhone customers the below note encouraging them, if they haven't already, to start paying at Spotify.com and save a few dollars.

Sometime a wire beats wireless. Google seems to think so and has made an Ethernet adaptor for their Chromecast streaming device. But they sold out in a day….talk about demand or maybe just an underestimation of the market.

Google's Chromecast gets a hardwired Ethernet adapter

Google's Chromecast is one of the easiest-to-use and most widely supported TV streaming sticks out there, but the only way to use it has been over a Wi-Fi connection. If your TV is out of range or your airways are too crowded, there really hasn't been a solution.

The war between Twitter's Periscope and Meerkat is heating up and becoming a feature war. Meerkat is going the "make everyone famous" approach adding a "cameo" mode to their personal video app.

Your pals can broadcast during your Meerkat streams, if you let them

To let viewers feel like they're part of the action, Meerkat announced a new feature that lets you ask for some crowd participation. The video-streaming app now has a Cameo tool that'll allow broadcasters to hand the reins over to viewers for up to a minute.

I've been using a few "Assistant's as an App" lately. It may be my Amazon Echo that by the sound of my voice adds items to my ToDoist To Do list, or the Meekan Schedulerwhich works inside Slack and helps me not double book or overlap meetings by alerting me to conflicts that come up as many others can add or change meetings on my calendar. I've been using Assistant To to schedule meetings with others but now we're seeing even more coming….

Why 'Assistant-As-App' Might Be the Next Big Tech Trend – Nir and Far

Whenever I feel uncomfortable writing about a topic, that's when I know I should write about it. So here goes. This article is about how a new way of designing apps changed my life. But to explain the power of this trend, I need to tell you about poop.