Entrepreneurial

– Alastair Goldfisher is the Editor-in-Charge at the Venture Capital Journal, a Thomson Reuters publication. This article originally appeared on PE Hub. –

New Enterprise Associates is planning to step up its pace of early stage investments, thanks in part, no doubt, to how the plummeting costs of launching a business make smaller investments potentially more lucrative.

NEA, which last month made early stage investments in Inporia, a stealth ecommerce startup, and Grubwithus, a social dining service, has reportedly formed NEA Seed Fund to target seed stage deals.

Details of NEA Seed Fund are unavailable, but the firm will reportedly invest from $50,000 to under $1 million in seed stage startups in various sectors. Funding for the seed investments will come from New Enterprise Associates 13, a $2.5 billion fund that the firm uses to invest in all stages in health care, cleantech and IT in the United States, India and China.

The firm is said to already have begun making seed stage bets as part of its new strategy, although it’s unclear if Inporia and Grubwithus are a part of NEA Seed Fund.

What do you get when you combine shopping and social media?

The answer, it seems, is the latest craze among tech investors.

On Tuesday, Swipely announced $7.5 million in Series A funding and the launch of a service that publishes info about person’s credit card purchases to groups of friends.

The funding was led by Index Ventures, and includes such celebrity patrons of social media as Chris Sacca, an early Twitter backer, and Ron Conway. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, whose VC firm Greylock Partners also took part in the funding round, will join Swipely’s board as an observer.

Swipely’s windfall comes shortly after Blippy pocketed roughly $11 million in funding, according to media reports, to help it push forward with a similar type of service. Among Blippy’s backers are Sequoia Capital and Evan Williams, better known as the CEO of Twitter.