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There are several important documents you'll want to have ready when you meet with potential investors. Your mission statement. Your founding team's resume and responsibilities. A business plan.

But most investors agree: they do not want to sign an NDA.

While non-disclosure agreements are designed to protect your ideas, asking potential investors to sign an NDA is generally seen as unnecessary and unwise. Most VCs point to the following reasons for avoiding NDAs:

Here on ReadWriteStart we are often providing resources and tips for young companies looking to raise funding from venture capitals and angel investors. This week's recommendation for our Weekend Reading series, Money Magnet: How to Attract Investors to Your Business by Jacoline Loewen, is a book aimed at helping entrepreneurs learn how to deal with financing and how to make their businesses attractive to investors.

If you failed to notice Google's lovely new artwork this morning, today is Earth Day. The purpose of the day in recent years has been to reflect on our energy consumption and to raise awareness on how to better preserve our planet, and startups can play a significant role in that preservation. Seedcamp, arguably the largest and most influential incubator in Europe, is teaming up with IBM and other organizations to host SmartCamp, a series of networking events across the globe designed to uncover the hottest early-stage companies with an environmental focus.

When looking to start a potentially venture-backed company, it's important to check the numbers to see if VCs are more or less likely to invest their funds. Back in January, we proposed that venture capitalist investments could see a bump in early 2010 thanks to increased fund raising at the end of last year. New data from the National Venture Capital Association, however, shows that in the first quarter of this year, VC investment has been modest at best, dropping slightly from the previous quarter, but starting stronger than 2009.

Friday is the last day of New York Entrepreneur Week which, upon its completion, will have featured over 100 speakers from across the globe. Since it kicked off, interesting stories have been surfacing around the event. A guest post on the event's official blog by Janine de Nysschen, a business consultant and endorser of change dynamics, asks why women play a very small role in startups and venture capital. As her passion might indicate, she feels this trend is changing.

Though rising numbers from the final quarter for 2009 had many hopeful that 2010 would see a rebound of venture capital funds, new data from the Nation Venture Capital Association (NVCA) is bound to disappoint as Q1 2010 saw the lowest first quarter numbers (PDF) in 17 years. According to the NVCA, just $3.6 billion has been raised so far this year by VCs compared to $5.2 billion in 2009 and $7.1 billion 2008.

I am a huge fan of podcasts and podcasting and one of my favorites to listen to each week is Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech (TWiT). Now and then, angel investor and Open Angel Forum founder Jason Calacanis is a guest on TWiT, and not long ago he launched a podcast network of his own borrowing the "This Week in" name (with Leo's blessing, of course). After success with his first podcast This Week in Startups (TWiSt) which Jason hosts himself, he is now creating a brand new podcast that is a perfect resource for startups and entrepreneurs: This Week in Venture Capital (TWiVC).

Being a resident of the Phoenix area, which is a significant distance from Silicon Valley, I wasn't able to attend the Demo Day show-and-tell pitch-fest at the end of Y Combinator (YC), but luckily, other reporters were there and have been slowly releasing stories about the companies and the event. Peter Kafka of All Things Digital published a video interview Thursday with YC co-founder Paul Graham from Demo Day in which he provides some interesting insights into how the investment community is rebounding and possibly how incubators are beginning to have influence on the larger VC firms.

I have a few different friends who are trying their hands at entrepreneurship; some have met with investors already, while others are closing in on their meeting date with anticipation and uncertainty. Based on hearing some of the things they were doing to prepare for their meeting, I thought it would be wise to roundup some of the best pitch advice I've come across not only for them but for the other first time entrepreneurs out there who may not know what typical VC pitches are like.

Unfortunately, you can't always explain why a venture capitalist chooses to invest in one startup and not in another. Despite what some will claim, there is no magic formula that entrepreneurs can follow to assure them funding 100% of the time; these are just guidelines to follow to increase your chances, but in the end, a VC's decision is not always about the quality of the company, idea or founders. It's like in a relationship when one party breaks it off by saying, "It's not you, it's me," only for VCs they actually mean it most of the time.