One of the most common criticisms of VC investors making seed investments is something that has become known as “the signaling problem.”  The explanation of this problem is that VCs create a “negative perception” about a company if they make a seed investment but then don’t follow through and make a next round investment.  Another way to say this is that a VC creates a “signaling situation” with their seed investment – if they don’t follow on in the next round they are “sending a signal” that something is wrong with the company (hence the label “signaling problem.”)

Backupify, a cloud computing service that backs up data on other cloud computing services, has raised $4.5 Million in Series A funding co-led by Avalon Ventures and General Catalyst, with Lowercase Capital and

GSMA, the organizers of the annual, massive Mobile World Congress, have announced a couple of new developments this morning.

It’s not every day we get to post about venture capital flowing to a Southern African company with global ambitions, but here goes:

FireID, a provider of security applications for mobile authentication, has secured 5 million euros (roughly $6.4 million) from Jersey-based early-stage investment firm 4Di Capital.

Oerlikon Solar remains committed to amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar technology and, to that end, is promising improved efficiency trends and improved cost numbers.

I was in a meeting discussing the smart grid market with a few partners and associates at Foundation Capital just under a year ago. In no uncertain terms, they laid out their opinion that the door was closed to any new entrants in the smart grid AMI networking space, that Silver Spring had it "sewn up." Granted, it was a bullish and self-serving opinion, given their backing of Silver Spring Networks, the player that everyone seems to be chasing.

So let me get this straight, you call yourself an angel, but you’re investing limited partners’ money…doesn’t that just make you a small, early-stage VC? And if you’re successful, don’t you just raise a bigger fund and hire more partners, looking a lot more like an early stage VC?

Facebook has come along way from being Mark Zuckerberg’s afterschool project. In fact “The Facebook Effect” author David Kirkpatrick implied at TechCrunch Disrupt that Facebook was so influential it should be governed by the United Nations, “They are too important to our culture to be left to a private corporation” <

Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, VC, angel, Facebook board member, and hedge fund manager, penned a long and thoughtful piece about the possibility of an impending apocalypse and how that might lead to financial bubbles. It was written in 2008 but I only came across it yesterday (on Hacker News). He calls it The Optimistic Thought Experiment.

If I ever write another book it will probably be about one of three topics. The first is the truth about how the press and journalism really works – the sausage making – to show just how much of a beautiful, subjective and chaotic mess it all is. The second idea is to talk about how perfect blogging is, with its constant feedback loop, as a training ground for mass psychology and manipulation. The third idea I’m keeping to myself for now, but it’s more startup focused.

According to new research from Pew Internet, 82% of American adults own a cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone or other similar devices. And 65% of adults who own them say they have slept with their cell phones on or right next to their beds.

Yet consumers don’t know what these devices are made of exactly, and what their environmental and health impact may be. Phone manufacturers aren’t required to share all the details. Some do anyway.