Personal CEO Shane Green says he has a solution for people who want to share personal info (from shoe sizes to insurance policy and credit card numbers) easily and securely. Info stored on Personal can be accessed by spouses, baby-sitters, anyone authorized to see it. But the security is so tight that if a user forgets their password, not even Personal can get it. Armed with $7.6M of VC from heavyweights like Steve Case and Ted Leonsis, the company built the service and has brought on about 10K beta users. The flood gates will open in the fall when the company offers its service to the public. An iPad/iPhone and Andoid app will also be released.

Personal media and policy director Karen Sippel chats up Shane and recent hire chief policy officer and general counsel Josh Galper. The product that will eventually help people make money by granting marketers temporary access their personal data. Say you’re taking a Caribbean trip and you want ideas of where to stay and what to do; your interests and hobbies could be sold through Personal to travel and entertainment companies in return for relevant deals. Personal plans to take a 10 percent or less cut of what those companies pay for the info. The rest goes to the consumer (yeah, we're talkin' 'bout you). Lots of online personal info is sold to marketers already but the consumer has no idea and certainly no way of making money off of it. Adds Shane: “The next generation of the Internet is capturing data and monetizing it without us seeing it. That is the assumed winner in this marketplace.”

So how does a startup get the attention of Steve Case? Shane and his team had built The Map Network, a company that helped businesses create digital maps of themselves. It was sold to NAVTEQ, which was then acquired by Nokia. In 2009, when Shane and his crew started Personal, that background helped get a meeting with Steve and Grotech Ventures’ Don Rainey, who were interested in the concept of how personal data can be controlled by consumers online. We suspect they also liked that Shane made money for his previous investors. Other Personal backers include Allen & Company, TCS Capital Management, and former AOL head Jon Miller, now of News Corp. Shane says he never expected to raise so much money from local investors, but he gives props to LivingSocial for bringing attention to the region. “I was really thinking this kind of business was bigger than what was traditionally funded by East coast VCs.”

How many entrepreneurs does it take to start the next generation tech wave? Well approximately 80 if you talk to FounderCorps. The group, formed in February by Amplifier Ventures managing director Jonathan Aberman, is made up of experienced entrepreneurs working on ways to mentor and guide the new crop entering the DC business scene. We crashed their meeting this week (bring a can of soda and a laptop and you look like you belong) at the Technology Venture Center in Deloitte’s Tysons Corner office. They brainstormed on mentor training and development programs the group will start in the fall at GMU, GWU and the University of Maryland. Some of the members include Beyond.com traffic VP Alex Murphy, Honesty Online business dev SVP Ric Fleisher, Venture Mentors managing director and GMU entrepreneur-in-residence John Casey, and Mtech ventures director Dean Chang.

Ozmosis cofounder and FounderCorps board member Joel Selzer (left) was one of the group’s first members. He tells us he’s been growing his DC-based collaboration and knowledge management platform for hospitals and life science firms. INC.spire executive director Bruce Mancinelli recently joined the group after seeing the DC region had lost some of the positive startup energy he experienced in the '90s. Aside from its mentorship program, FounderCorps is holding a golf fundraiser for its fellowship program, which gives cash and business advice to entrepreneurs through business formation contests and programs.

Remember when we chatted with myRete cofounder and COO Stephen Smith about his bootstrapped WhosHere mobile app? Well it looks like he got a VC offer he couldn’t refuse. The company raised $1.25M from Lightbank, a Chicago VC fund launched by Groupon founders. The money will be used for expanding to other platforms, scaling the infrastructure, and creating brand recognition. With 4M downloads and 1M active users, the app lets people with similar interests in an area find, text, picture-message, and make free WiFi-based voice calls with each other. We really thought entrepreneurs had to pursue (or beg for) VC, but Stephen says an offer was made by the firm after an introduction by fellow VC firm, NEA. Stephen managed to do all this while helping his wife care for their newborn twins, who he says are eating, sleeping, and taking in the scenery. (We suspect there’s a smartphone toy in their future.)

CompTIA research VP Tim Herbert used to hear lots of snickers when he’d mention the words “paperless office.” But he gave us a sneak peak of his latest survey of hundreds of companies, which found they’re actually getting closer to wiping out paper (sorry, Dunder Mifflin) with more electronic invoices, digital signatures, and mobile devices. Other findings: Not only are people using their own devices to do their jobs but CEOs aren’t getting so involved in every IT purchase. Social media is also coming out of its experimental phase and becoming more a piece of the business. (Good news for this scrappy new startup we discovered called Google+.)

CompTIA technology analysis director Seth Robinson also recently grilled companies about their tech views and gave us a preview of his findings for the trade association’s annual show kicking off this week. Exec attitudes toward the cloud have changed dramatically since last year when they were experimenting. Now they’ve tackled the obstacles like integration with existing systems and the initial cost outlay and are moving more mission critical apps to the cloud. Company heads are also focusing on closing the communications loop and shifting away from just voice and data and moving toward collaboration, video and social. Nearly 80 percent of companies in the survey say tablets will be a big part of their communications strategy. Seth says he’ll be watching to see if they completely replace laptops and smartphones.