For Matt Murphy, partner with influential Silicon Valley Venture fund Kleiner Perkins and point person on the firm's iFund, old-school is still the way to go.
During an interview at the Reuters technology summit, the VC said picking the right startups to back was tough, given that he had received 8,000 business plans for iFund, which invests in iPhone and iPad applications.
The onslaught of business plans from app developers escalated to almost 500 per day when the fund expanded to $200 million in March.
When asked what gets his attention, Murphy said anything handwritten or hand-made leaves an impression.
"What stands out in this day and age of technology is when somebody sends me like handwritten things with hand sketched-out drawing, or a model or mock-up of something they are building," he said. "It is always entertaining to see something done in an old-school way that stands out."
"I can't say if any of those things I funded, but it did leave an impression on me."
(reporting by Poornima Gupta)