Borro, a New York-based “lending marketplace for luxury personal assets,” has appointed Nigel Morris as chairman of its board. Morris cofounded Capital One and is currently the managing partner of QED Investors, an investment fund in Alexandria, Va.

33Across, a New York-based social targeting platform whose technology tracks possible customers among friends, has hired three new executives: Sachin Devand, Carine Roman, and Pedro Mejia. which provides technology to track possible customers among friends. Devand, who joins as VP of Platform Products, was previous VP of Advertising Products at LucidMedia. Roman, now the company’s [...]

QED Investors and Core Capital Partners have put $7.5 million into Valen Technologies, a provider of predictive analytics technology for the insurance industry. The money will help Valen with data consortium expansion, predictive analytics platform enhancements, channel development, sales and marketing.

My “friends,” or people I’m socially connected to, are a potential goldmine for some retailers.

That’s according to 33Across, which provides technology to track possible customers among friends, says cofounder Eric Wheeler.

For example, if I buy something off of eBay, 33Across identifies possible purchasers and shoppers that are socially connected me. The company does this by placing a cookie on a browser that lets retailers track potential buyers (users can opt out of the cookie, Wheeler says). “It’s not behavioral,” Wheeler says. “We identify the anonymous connections of consumers that are buying and shopping a certain brand.”

L2C Inc., an Atlanta-based provider of consumer risk evaluation and identification solutions, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding. The round was co-led by QED Investors and McGovern Enterprises.

With consumer loans increasingly difficult to obtain, Americans are putting more effort into attracting lenders by monitoring and improving their credit scores. That’s led to more traffic for monitoring sites. And it’s resulted in an increasing amount of interest in the credit score industry from investors.

Over the past two years, venture and angel investors have funded at least a half-dozen startups offering tools to track credit scores, view offers from lenders, and protect against identity theft.

Last week, the latest credit score-focused funding recipient, San Francisco-based CreditKarma.com, announced that it raised $2.5 million in a Series A investment round to build up its advertising-supported business.