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Let's face it - the traditional business plan as we know it (or as we knew it) is slowly slowly going away. Or is it? Startups and small businesses move at such lightning pace these days that a static document quickly becomes outdated, but the principals and lessons involved with its creation could be valuable in a new form. Many young entrepreneurs still think a business plan is a must-have cornerstone of their business, but as many venture capitalists have said recently, the traditional business plan is not the end-all be-all for startup success.

In the world of the investing in and acquiring of companies, strategic investments sit on the fence between these two camps. When an established company sees a smaller one making progress in a field that it is interested in, it may make an investment in the company for one of several reasons. Doing so can give the company a bit of leverage in terms of helping steer the startup while not dropping a big acquisition investment. That said, it is important for startups to understand both sides of the coin before taking on strategic investors.

For many successful startups, there exists a point where their product is popular enough to grow beyond the minimum viable product, but is yet to be discovered by millions more that may be turned off if the service is too complicated. Internet startups need to find a balance between keeping the power users interested, while not overwhelming the newbies. According to Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, Tumblr, a rapidly growing micro-blogging service, is one company doing a beautiful job of finding this balance by turning the "less is more" mantra into "less and more."

Have you ever found yourself ignoring the directions of your car's GPS in order to get somewhere faster or more efficiently than it can calculate? Me too. Chances are when leaving point A, you plugged in the address of point B, and a route was calculated on how to get from one to the other. The problem is, things come up on the route from point A to point B that may cause you to divert from your path such as construction, road closures, traffic, side trips you need to make or neighborhoods you may choose to avoid driving straight through.

Last week we discussed how no matter how intriguing your startup is to an investor, they may still decline to get involved or look further at your company simply because it's not a fit for them. While it is important to understand that different investors have different needs and motivations, it is equally important for both parties to know how to correctly take the next step and handle the rejection in the right way.