It’s clear that fewer seed-funded companies are receiving follow-on rounds right now. For nascent startups, it’s certainly cause for hand-wringing. But already venture-backed companies that are gaining traction should also be concerned about what this trend means for them — specifically, more investor visits.

From the Occupy protests to the GOP presidential debates, it’s hard to think of a U.S. public forum where the issue of jobs, and the lack of them, has failed to capture the spotlight. So, it shouldn’t be surprising that in recent months some of the attention has spilled over to the venture-backed startup arena [...]

Sonar.me didn’t win this week’s competitive TechCrunch Disrupt contest, but the company would make a plum prize for another organization: LinkedIn. The young, New York-based startup makes a mobile application that shows users who in a room they’re connected to on social media networks, then allows them to message those contacts. You can’t make it [...]

BranchOut, a year-old San Francisco-based startup that connects Facebook users with job opportunities, has raised an $18 million Series B round led by Redpoint Ventures. Joining in the financing were previous investors Accel Partners, Norwest Ventures, and Floodgate. Altogether, BranchOut has raised slightly more than $24 million. BranchOut, which employs 20 people — a number it plans [...]

Entrepreneur Rick Marini has a lot to be thankful for, including smart, connected friends who’ve supported him in the launch of two of his businesses. The most recent of these is BranchOut, which leverages Facebook to help people find business connections and that has an enviable list of backers and advisors. Marini may soon need them more than [...]

Earlier today, I chatted with an industry insider with ties to the biggest social networking services, including as a minority investor. He didn’t want to be identified, alas, but we talked at some length about 3-month-old BranchOut, a career networking app for Facebook that last week announced a $6 million Series A from Accel Partners, [...]