Investors get lots of emails. Jason Mendelson of Foundry Group wrote just this morning on how he wishes email were slower so he wouldn’t suffer from what he calls “Email Compulsive Disorder.” That being said, there are ways to write better messages when communicating with investors (or anyone who receives a lot of email daily) that will make the process simpler, quicker and will better your chances of hearing back from them.

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Babak Nivi over at Venture Hacks wrote today on scheduling meetings with investors via email, and how he hopes the the back-and-forth can be simplified. Using dummy emails, Nivi shows that scheduling a meeting with busy, email-laden investors requires more to-the-point conversations; instead of vaguely proposing to meet “sometime next week,” be specific and outline your availability right now and in the near future.

Nivi also suggests using services like Plancast to see if a potential investor will be in your area soon and use that to schedule a meetup. If not, get on the horn. Other ways to streamline this process include keeping your email short, but not colloquial (stay away from Internet abbreviations), and including some good news about your company that provides some context.

These guidelines are great for entrepreneurs looking to communicate with investors, but the same rules can be used in other situations. To be honest, I am probably guilty of not being terribly specific when people want to chat with me on the phone; I let the email chatter go back and forth until a time is agreed on instead of asserting my availability. At the same time, startups and PR agencies could potentially learn some lessons from Nivi’s article when reaching out to media to share their story.

Personally, I only like press releases when they accompany a short personal message. I get a lot of press releases sent to my inbox, but as 37signals‘ Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson said in their new book Rework, press releases are like spam to journalists. We get tons of them every day, so chances are simply sending a press release won’t get you as far as taking a different approach.

The emails I respond to most frequently have a short personal message. I get a few emails each week that not only talk directly to me, but will also mention something else I have written about in the past. It may seem gimmicky, but I’m more likely to read an email from someone who understands the topics I cover.

Sometimes when emails pile up, I may not respond to some messages I may have genuinely been interested in because they got lost in the deluge. Now and then I rediscover and older email when the sender pings me by sending another message under the same conversation. This lets me review their first message and reassess, plus it tells me they actually care enough to send a friendly reminder, and that I’m not just another writer on their email list.

If you know you’re emailing someone whose inbox bulges each day, do them a favor and keep your emails short and to-the-point. When scheduling meetings, be specific, not vague; it helps to keep the volume of emails down, and is less stressful in the long run.

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This week we’ve got a book hot off the presses for your weekly dose of entrepreneurial reading as 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are back with their second book in four months. Released earlier this month, Rework, a no-nonsense rethinking of how to successfully start and run a business, comes hot on the heels of their first book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application, which published in November of 2009.

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This time Fried and Hansson take a more general approach to business by examining the ways that new companies are disrupting traditional business practices and making a big splash. They cover their entrepreneurial bases by reminding us that “no time is no excuse” and that “a business without a path to profit isn’t a business, it’s a hobby,” but then also elaborate on less traditional practices that have helped them succeed.

The main theme of the book is to trim the fat and do fewer things better; simplifying every aspect of your business and doing a smaller number of things at a higher quality is far better than trying to do too much and a mediocre level. There were times when customers of their products wanted more features and they refused to comply because it would slow them down and decrease efficiency. They decry time-stealing meetings, lengthy contracts, childish office politics and bloated inventories because they weigh down companies from reaching their full potential.

Rework is a great read for entrepreneurs because it is very focused and doesn’t waste any time with lengthy use cases. The book itself is an example of the principals it teaches; the quality of a written work is not based on it’s length, so why should company be judged by how many features it offers? Fried and Hansson admit that the book, which comes in at a dense but brief 288 pages, was originally drafted to be nearly twice as long, but why say in 600 pages what you can say under 300? Another reason the book is a great read is because of the authors’ open and honest tone.

“Ever seen those weapons prisoners make out of soap, or a spoon? They make do with what they’ve got,” one passage humorously points out. “Now we’re not saying you should go out and shank somebody, but get creative, and you’ll amazed with what you can make with just a little.”

Other useful and easily digestible analogies for their unique business ideas include comparing your company to a hot dog stand. They advise that the best way to trim down an inflated company is to find the “epicenter” by asking yourself, “If I took this away, would what I’m selling still exist?” The best hot dog stand doesn’t worry about the decorations on the stand, or the condiments – it worries about the hot dogs.

There are dozens of other valuable pieces of advice in Rework that are sure to inspire any entrepreneur or small business owner. But as LeVar Burton famously said at the end of each episode of Reading Rainbow, you don’t have to take my word for it. Seth Godin, who has authored several books on business and entrepreneurship including The Dip which we profiled earlier this year, had nothing but high praise for Rework.

“Jason and David have broken all the rules and won. Again and again they’ve demonstrated that the regular way isn’t necessarily the right way,” says Godin. “They just don’t say it, they do it. And they do it better than just about anyone has any right to expect.”

This book is an obvious buy not only because the of the expert advice dispensed by the successful founders of 37signals, but also because the book is an easy, quick and inexpensive read. Personally, in a few short hours I was able to breeze through the audio version, which can be found online for less than $10. But if you prefer reading words on a page, the Kindle version is also $10, or a hardback copy is just $3 more at some online retailers.

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If you ever thought startup life would be about champagne toasts and million dollar term sheets then you need to get back in your time machine and set the dial for the nineties. If there’s one thing we learned in the latter half of this decade, it’s discipline. To say that it was a tough year, would be an understatement. But those of us who stayed lean will be back for 2010. While the below concepts weren’t invented this year, they certainly hit their stride in 2009.

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1. Outsourced Labor: Rather than hiring onsite staff, more companies flocked to services like Mechanical Turk and Crowdflower to fulfill simple tasks. Companies listed their jobs and thankfully, a temporary workforce was there to get it done.

2. Cloud Scalability: Rather than paying for a slew of dedicated servers, startups took advantage of elastic workload tools like Amazon Web Services and Heroku. These services kept our site running during huge traffic spikes, but they ensured we weren’t burning cash in the downtime.

3. Web-Based Project Services: Google Apps made huge headway in 2009 as companies migrated from Microsoft to the cloud. Many startups began using real-time cloud collaboration tools to organize their projects, while others looked to customer service sites like Get Satisfaction and Zendesk to manage complaints.

4. Monetization: While consumers will settle for free products, premium services demand a certain level of competence. According to 37signals CEO Jason Fried, “the most intimate transaction between people is money”. In other words, if you put a price on your product and users paid it, you got your feedback. From paid iPhone apps to subscription music services, businesses in 2009 got the feedback they needed to find out if their products made the cut with consumers.

5. The New PR: From soft-spoken Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and his Twitter empire to fast talking Gary Vaynerchuk and his wine podcasts, startup leaders opened the kimono and engaged with stakeholders. Communities don’t get built on autopilot or by a ghostwriting marketing intern. To grow social capital, we learned that we need to put ourselves out there (flaws and all) and treat our audience members like the intelligent beings they are.

Thanks for reading ReadWriteStart in 2009. We look forward to a great 2010 with you and would like to wish you a Happy New Year.

Photo Credit: Windell H. Oskay, Optical Illusion

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