Dorrian Porter is founder of Northern Imagination.

On January 1, 1999, I immigrated to Silicon Valley from Canada to work as a corporate attorney for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. I watched in amazement as 400 companies went public that year (about a quarter of them through my law firm), and in March 2000 I felt compelled to leave the firm and start a company called HigherMarkets. It was around the same day that the Nasdaq peaked at 5132.52.

The experience and timing of my departure — and the name of my first company — sadly signified a tight connection for me between money and entrepreneurship.

Money has a nasty habit of invading the definition of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, where we tend to measure success by funding rounds, valuations, and liquidity events. I often run with a definition of an entrepreneur defined by money: People who don’t know your financial situation think you’re rich, and people who do think you’re crazy. An entrepreneur can be a person spending $10,000 to open a shop or $100 million to build a new kind of car.

Long before the car company, there was an inventor named Nikola Tesla who navigated choices of money and entrepreneurship as we all do in the Silicon Valley. Tesla immigrated to the east coast of the United States in 1884, initially to work alongside Thomas Edison. That relationship didn’t last, but Tesla is credited with the inventions that fueled the rise of electric company Westinghouse and made alternating current the standard of electricity we rely on today.

Larry Page of Google, who mentioned Nikola Tesla on a recent earnings call and describes him as one of the greatest inventors ever, has said you might want to be more like Edison than Tesla. In fact that comparison may only be true in textbooks.

A closer study of the events of the 1890s, for example, reveals that Edison faced similar entrepreneurial challenges to Tesla: Edison was kicked aside from General Electric, the successor company to his own, leading him to swear off the same financial backers for the next 30 years. Tesla, on the other hand, generously allowed Westinghouse to renegotiate a patent deal that enabled the financially strapped company to establish the electricity standard we rely on today.

Tesla made it clear that being a great entrepreneur — one who commercialized a critical standard that powers innovation 125 years later — isn’t necessarily about the money.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t live without two famous early inventions of Edison’s — photography and film — Tesla’s contributions are the ones that can spark Silicon Valley’s imagination on an even bigger scale now. Tesla made a commitment to the study of wireless energy and wireless information transmission beginning in the 1880s that led him to explore communication with other planets, to evaluate ways to transmit energy wirelessly around earth, and to care about taking advantage of the sun’s radiation and earth’s vibrations to prevent the squandering of natural resources that was occurring rapidly around him.

Sound useful today?

I love Instagram as much as anyone, but my nine-year-old daughter points out that less time on my iPhone can equal more time on things that really matter. Tesla focused on discovery in areas that really mattered, and he faced a great deal of ridicule — and no doubt financial impact — for it.

As the need to invite more immigrants to the Silicon Valley only increases, we need to send the message more than ever that our love for creative invention and a focus on the biggest challenges are more valued than money. There are some outstanding financial backers in the Silicon Valley, but the majority of venture capitalists face their own short-term problems that don’t always allow them to live up to the long-term horizons mentioned on their websites.

Whether you’ve just helped fund a startup or raised money for one, or whether you’re running a big company or working at one, we all need to be looking for ways to hail the inventors around us regardless of financial outcome. We don’t necessarily need to shift our models of capital allocation or stock grants to do it, but we do need to change where we spend our time celebrating. I’ve heard a lot of lip service paid to words like innovation and creativity in the Silicon Valley. It’s up to each of us to defend those words in a way that means something more than the next acquisition.

The free exchange of information and affordable access to sustainable energy — both issues worked on by Nikola Tesla in his time — have the potential to solve critical issues of poverty and education, and inspire peace, around the world. Wireless information transmission and energy remain two of the Silicon Valley’s biggest opportunities.

Hail to the inventors who are working on those challenges today without regard to financial outcomes. Hail to Nikola Tesla.

Dorrian Porter organized Northern Imagination in 2013, a company that seeks to positively impact the wellbeing and happiness of people via creative projects, ideas, and inventions.  He just launched a Kickstarter campaign to build a statue of Nikola Tesla in the Silicon Valley to fuel creativity on the big issues of energy and wireless. You can watch a short video and participate in the campaign here:  http://kck.st/ZWLzgG.

photo credit: Recuerdos de Pandora via photopin cc

Facing unstable global markets and an upcoming presidential election, venture capitalists took a more disciplined approach to their investments in 2012 than in previous years.

Results from a MoneyTree report in partnership with the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) found that investments totaled $26.5 billion in 2012, with VCs closing 3,698 deals. This is a 10 percent decrease in dollars and a 6 percent decline in deals over the prior year.

Related: Check out the top investment deals from the fourth quarter.

Tracy Lefteroff, global managing partner of Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s venture capital and private equity arm attributed the decrease to unstable markets and “taxes, government policy, the general environment in the stock and equity markets, troubles in life sciences, [and] the regulatory market” in a call with press and analysts.

However, investors and financial analysts agree that there is cause for optimism in 2013. For the fourth quarter, venture investment of $6.4 billion into 968 companies fell 3 percent in dollars but rose 5 percent in deal volume over Q3 2012. With the re-election of President Obama and burgeoning excitement about the JOBS Act, deals kicked into high gear.

Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA, said there would be a decline in “me too” investments in 2013, meaning that VCs won’t just follow the herd. With the industry facing constriction, “more seasoned entrepreneurs” will get funding over 20-something Internet wunderkinds.

In addition, the experts anticipate a steady pipeline of high-profile IPOs in 2013, particularly in the business-to-business (B2B) software sector. Research firm CB Insights predicts that 80 percent of the companies in a position to go public target their products at businesses rather than consumers.

Related: We predicted that SurveyMonkey, Dropbox, and Square would be among the companies to go public in 2013.

Indeed, software is the only sector to see a steady increase in venture capital dollars, while biotech and life sciences, clean-tech and consumer products and services, failed to capture VC attention in the final quarter of 2012. Investment dollars rose 10 percent over 2011 to $8.3 billion, which funded 1,266 software deals.

This represents the highest level of investment in the software sector in over a decade.

It seems the reports of a “series A crunch” have been exaggerated. For the fourth quarter, early stage investments increased 5 percent in dollars and 9 percent in deals over the previous quarter.

Investors on the call, including John Backus of New Atlantic Ventures, said there were a healthy number of companies receiving first-round financing. Seed deals are notoriously difficult to track as family and friends often privately invest. “I don’t believe we had a series A crunch,” said Backus, who said he witnessed an “angel feeding frenzy.”

With entrepreneur-friendly government regulation and high-quality late stage companies on the cusp of going public, VCs expect to see solid returns in the coming year. “It’s a terrific time to be investor,” said Jim Healy of Sofinnova Ventures. ”We expect to be highly active in 2013.”

The quarterly Moneytree report is issued by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the NVCA, with data collected by Thomson Reuters. The full report is available online at NVCA.org.

Image: igor.stevanovic |Shutterstock 

PayPal today announced the launch of PayPal My Cash Card. It is the company’s first “fully branded cash loading token”which easily converts cash into secure online funds.

People purchase a My Cash Card, which are available as of today at more than 30,000 retail locations across the U.S. They then create an account on the companion PayPal site and load the funds into their PayPal account using the PIN number on the back of the card. From there, they can online shop to their hearts’ and wallet’s content.

This is a useful option for people who prefer or only have access to cash, but want to make purchases online. Those folks in cash-flow heavy professions (bartenders, strippers, and so on), people wary of large financial institutions, or those who simply do not have a credit/debit card can now join in the fun of online shopping.

PayPal joined with InComm for this initiative, a company that provides a suite of prepaid products. It is part of PayPal’s overarching mission to be the method that people pay for everything, online, offline, and the netherworld in-between. In August, PayPal announced a partnership with Discover that will bring its technology to the point-of-sale (POS) for millions of merchants. Once the integration is complete, consumers will be able to pay using their PayPal accounts in-store. Rather than pulling out a wallet, all they need to do is type in their mobile number and a PIN.

During a roundtable chat yesterday with Hill Ferguson, PayPal’s VP of global product, he said that all these consumer engagement initiatives are in an effort to create a one-stop-shop for retail payments.

“We have spent the past year and a half reinventing and reinvigorating the brand to give it a personality,” he said. “We have 117 million active users. We help offline users get online and online users get offline to make the shopping experience as secure and convenient as possible. Our vision is to be the global digital wallet.”

PayPal started out as an internet payment service way back in the 1990s and was acquired by eBay in 2002. Like any savvy company in the e-commerce/payments space, it has put a heavy emphasis on mobile transactions and has seen record mobile shopping numbers over the past few weeks. Whether physical wallets are to be relegated to the domain of pocket watches and monocles is still up in the air. PayPal, however, is hard at work to create options for all shoppers, regardless of their payment proclivities.

After targeting financial planning for women for the past few years, New York City-based LearnVest is aiming big with its latest update, which transforms the startup from a niche financial planning service to something that anyone can use.

LearnVest announced today that it has upgraded its core Money Center tool and tied it together with its financial planning services, making it easier than ever for financial planners to help you manage your money. Additionally, the company is now a Registered Investment Advisor, allowing its planners to offer investment advice as well.

“I just want to make financial planning really consumable — right now it’s not a consumer product,” Aleva von Tobel, LearnVest’s founder and CEO, told VentureBeat in an interview last week. “Being able to get advice from an expert… it’s a total disorganized process…”

LearnVest previously targeted women for financial planning because it was simply easier to go after a specific segment of users. But after the launch of its initial financial planning tools last year, Von Tobel tells me, the company has attracted plenty of men as well. Now, Von Tobel believes (without getting too political) LearnVest can bring financial planning to the 99 percent.

“I kind of step back and look at the LegalZoom’s of the world … everyone needs legal documents … but can we all afford a personal lawyer? No.,” Von Tobel said. “What they did is make getting access to legal documents very easy and consumable, and now they have legal services where you ca actually pay to work with lawyers… So at the high level, there’s an expert intensive industry that users really need access to but can’t afford because barriers to entry have been too high, [we're] disrupting it by putting in technology and making it affordable and consumable.”

LearnVest’s Money Center tool originally let you hook in your financial accounts to track your spending, but with this latest update it has become a valuable financial planning companion. Now the Money Center lets you visualize your budget and financial goals, and it also offers up tips to help you maintain your financial plan. Unlike Mint, which also helps manage your financial accounts, LearnVest doesn’t push you towards third-party services and credit cards to make an extra buck.

LearnVest is also working on an iPhone app, which should be available in the next few weeks. The app offers pretty much all of the features in LearnVest’s desktop Money Center, and in many ways it’ll be even more convenient. In particular, the company has developed a quick and simple way to enter cash transactions — it’s almost as simple as a Foursquare check-in. Keeping track of cash transactions has been my biggest problem with using money management services, so I’m hoping LearnVest has finally cracked that nut.

The company has also revamped its premium service, which is powered by a team of Certified Financial Planners. Just like LearnVest’s previous offering, you’ll have your own CFP to work with, which could be particularly helpful for those of you with complex finances.

A new “Budget Starter” plan ($89) gives you a phone consultation with a Learnvest CFP and three months of e-mail support. The “5-Year Planner” plan ($349 for annual) lets you map out a longer financial plan with a CFP and it comes with a phone consultation, three quarterly check-ins, and a year of free e-mail support.

At the high end, there’s the “Portfolio Builder” package ($599 a year), which is geared at people who are ready to invest, but want to avoid the fees of traditional financial and investment planners. It includes everything from the 5-Year Planner package, along with additional help with their investment portfolio.

As part of the upgraded Money Center, LearnVest’s CFPs can also view your accounts live during consultations. This allows the CFP to keep track of your finances without constantly having to catch up on your paperwork. (Think of it like working on a shared Google Doc.) Co-browsing your accounts may seem like a minor feature, but Von Tobel says nobody else in the financial planning is offering anything similar. Currently, the feature is restricted to when you’re on the phone with a CFP.

LearnVest has raised around $25 million from Accel Partners, Rose Tech Ventures, Richmond Management, and others.

Front photo via Tracy O/Flickr

As CNet reports, an unidentified hacker found and absconded with an unencrypted backup of virtual wallet keys, taking 24,000 Bitcoins, each worth just over ten U.S. dollars. It’s the virtual equivalent of leaving your wallet on the cafe table as you go to use the restroom.

In a blog post, BitFloor founder Roman Shtylman said that BitFloor, the exchange for Bitcoins, would be paused while he evaluates options. He said he still had logs for all the accounts, trades and transfers for every user, but the theft took the vast majority of the coins BitFloor has on hand at any time, which are generated by commissions on Bitcoin trades.

Shtylman wants to continue to operate BitFloor, but that is currently in doubt. And shuttering the exchange, while a last resort, is a very real option:

As a last resort, I will be forced to fully shut BitFloor down and initiate account repayment using current available funds. I still have all of the logs for accounts, trades, transfers. I know exactly how much each user currently has in their account for both USD and BTC. No records were lost in this attack.

There are multiple Bitcoin exchanges, and BitFloor is only the fourth-largest, globally. So if BitFloor is forced to shutter operations, it does not mean the end of the line for Bitcoin as a currency. In addition, there is no centralized authority for Bitcoins — the system is inherently resistant to a single point of failure.

On the other hand, other Bitcoin exchanges have gone bankrupt, some have been hacked, and there are trojans and viruses in the wild that can steal Bitcoin digital wallets.

It’s not something that engenders trust in something as fundamental as money.

photo credit: zcopley via photo pin cc

The company will now offer free access to the LearnVest My Money Center, which lets you link all of your financial accounts and track your spending with an email-like folder system, as well as the Take Control Bootcamp, a 10-day action-oriented email program designed to help you get a handle on your finances.

LearnVest is also launching new premium memberships as 1-day ($4.99), 3-month ($39.99), and 1-year ($129.99) offerings. The plans will give members of the site access to LearnVest’s Advice Center, as well as unlimited access to the company’s team of financial planners. Members can ask specific questions to the planners through the “Ask an Expert” feature. Through the Advice Center, members can also view LearnVest Courses, which offer on-demand lessons that reflect topics traditional financial planners normally bring up.

“Financial planning should not be a luxury,” Alexa von Tobel, LearnVest founder and CEO said in a press release this morning. “LearnVest is here to make financial planning more accessible to millions of Americans and these new personalized financial tools will help us achieve that.”

Von Tobel told me that the site is specifically targeting women because it’s much more useful to target a specific group instead of casting a wide net like competing services such as Mint. Von Tobel said that most women she’s talked to have trouble figuring out where to begin with their financial planning — LearnVest simplifies that process by offering specific plans for women from all walks of life, from recent grads to career women.  But even though the site targets women, there’s nothing stopping men from taking advantage of its tools.

LearnVest has helped over 1 million women since it launched in December 2009 and has had over 110,000 users go through its Boot Camp since last year von Tobel said. The company expects to serve over 400,000 users a day by the end of the year.

The company performed an exhaustive survey of over 5,000 women on their financial attitudes and also went even deeper into a group of 1,300 to fully understand their financial needs and habits. Doing so gave the company the insight to offer tips and lessons that most women would actually use.

Based in New York City, LearnVest recently scored a hefty second round of $19 million led by Accel Capital. The company also landed $4.5 million last year, which paired Von Tobel up with one of the few female VCs around, Accel partner Theresia Gouw Ranzetta.

If you’d like to try out LearnVest’s premium service free for a day, you can use the code venturebeat2011 when you sign up.

Advocates of Bitcoin, the open-source digital currency that’s easy to anatomize and difficult to duplicate, were quick to point out that Bitcoin — just like paper money — is only as secure as the place you store it.

The digital currency is stored in an unencrypted wallet file, but Bitcoin users can take measures to improve the security of their investment.

“If there was a means to invalidate the thieves’ coins or to reclaim them, then the same could be done to a legitimate user. Bitcoin is a secure system only so long as you keep your wallet secured — and sadly it seems you were not able to adequately do so,” one forum post pointed out, adding that “this isn’t a reason to abandon bitcoin completely or to dismiss it as flawed, but of course it’s understandable that you wouldn’t want to reinvest after having lost so much.”

It’s unlikely that a person would be able to recover the stolen investment, since Bitcoin isn’t recognized by a national government. The U.S. government is even seeking legal action against those that use Bitcoin. At the very least, the thieves could be prosecuted for illegally compromising another person’s property and taking their possessions.

While Bitcoin may ultimately prove to be a bad investment, it can still be used as a means to an end –  purchasing goods and services that are illegal with a large degree of anonymity.

However, people are tracking the market value of Bitcoin now more than ever. StockTwits, the Twitter for business, recently created a Bitcoin trading symbol ($BCOIN) to make it easier to track.

The company, which made its public debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City Monday, touts its services as “antivirus for our bills” because it scans each credit card transaction and sends out alerts for all questionable charges.

BillGuard identifies those questionable transactions using the same automated tests credit card companies use to determine fraud, scouring the web for trends and crowdsourcing transactions flagged by other BillGuard users.

Many banks offer online services that show you detailed information on each transaction made, but that information isn’t always easy to parse. BillGuard’s interface helps make sense of transaction data points and groups them to show what’s safe and what’s questionable (as shown in the image below). It also gives its users statistics and a detailed description of the merchant for each transaction.

While some people might be scared off at the idea of allowing a third-party in to manage their financial security, BillGuard seems pretty low risk. The site doesn’t store credit card data on its servers and has read-only access to credit statements. So, users can’t actually make changes to their credit accounts from BillGuard. They can only view and manage activity that’s been made.

The startup has $3 million in funding and has entered into partnerships discussions with some major banks and identity theft companies, according to TechCrunch.

Check out the video embedded below for the company’s official demo.

The company made the announcement at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco.

Users can link their bank accounts or credit cards to Gifi to leave money at any Foursquare check-in location, with the option of writing a clue for their friends to help find the hidden booty. Users can also write a message to the finder after they discover the cash.

Those on the receiving end of the money do not need Gifi. They only need to check in at Foursquare — though the company didn’t make clear how those users would receive the money outside of the Gifi app.

While real money is the only transaction medium available today, Gifi co-creator Andrew Kortina said the app would probably expand into other forms of currency like Facebook Credits. The service is also only configured for Foursquare but will eventually expand to other location-based apps like Facebook Places, he said.

The new app seems like a way to expand the use of location-based services by “game-ifying” them, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, Kortina said. Gifi users can hide the money without any kind of clue or note, taking the “game” element out of Gifi and leaving it as just another way to surprise and connect friends, he said.

Gifi comes out of Philadelphia, Penn.-based Venmo, which gives users the ability to send money to their friends through a text message and broadcast it to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Development of Gifi began in January, and Venmo has raised $1.2 for the app.