Matrix Partners, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture firm, has brought aboard a new general partner. Jared Fliesler joins the firm from the privately held payments company Square, where he served as VP of user acquisition and business operations. Prior to Square, Fliesler was an executive with Slide and is credited with helping to negotiate the company’s $200 million sale to Google in 2010.

Keith Rabois, a serial operating executive who most recently resigned as the chief operating officer of the payments company Square, has joined the venture firm Khosla Ventures as a partner. Before joining Square, Rabois spent numerous years at LinkedIn, first as a vice president, then as an executive VP of strategy and business development. Earlier in his career, Rabois, who has a law degree, was also an executive VP focused on public policy at PayPal. He also spent a year as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Clarium Capital, the hedge fund run by PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

Venture investing fell in 2012 for the first time in three years as global economic uncertainty combined with a soft fundraising environment to spark caution in the general partners.

Call them the cream of the venture crop, the 472 high flying U.S.-based companies with valuations above $100 million and exciting businesses to justify them.

Venture capitalists remained cautious during the summer months of a presidential election year, reining in third quarter investments in the face of a slow economy and soft IPO market. Investments by U.S. firms came to $6.49 billion in the quarter down 11.6% from a year ago.

SV Angel is in the market for a fresh $40 million, according to a new SEC filing.

Quinn was director of products at Square and will invest in consumer Internet companies at KP. She steps into her new role in June.

(Reuters) – Square, the mobile payment start-up that counts former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on its board of directors, has a new big-name backer: British billionaire Richard Branson. Branson has made a “multimillion” dollar investment in Square, according to a Square spokeswoman who declined to disclose the exact amount. Branson’s investment in Square follows [...]

Kabbage, Inc. said it secured $17 million of Series B funding in a deal led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. Existing investors BlueRun Ventures; David Bonderman, founder of TPG Capital; Warren Stephens, chief executive of Stephens Inc.; and the UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund participated in the round. Also part of the round were several individuals, including [...]

Mobile is finally coming into its own. Mobile startups are reaching scale, with revenue of sometimes $100 million or more. Facebook and Zynga, once tethered to the wired Internet, are seeing massive mobile traffic. And Internet radio service Pandora Media now gets more users from mobile devices than desktop computers, a reversal of the past [...]