Lady Gaga: Silicon Valley Investor

Lady Gaga has already partnered with Zynga, crashed Amazon with record album sales, sold designer clothing on Gilt, and now, she’s getting in on the ground floor of a new tech startup.

Last year, after Gaga and her business manager Troy Carter were invited to meet with Apple’s Steve Jobs to give feedback on Ping, Apple’s music-centric social network, Carter—who is already an investor in several tech startups, including Bre.ad, Lumier, and Tiny chat—was inspired to come up with his own way to help entertainers maintain a presence on the social Web.

So Carter and his friend Matthew Michelsen, a tech entrepreneur, founded Backplane, a company that will power online communities around interests like musicians or sports teams, and integrate feeds from sites like Facebook and Twitter. “Backplane will provide a platform and tools for communities to socialize and communicate on a more focused level,” Carter told The New York Times.

Backplane has already raised $1 million from a group of investors led by Tomorrow Ventures, the investment firm led by Google’s Eric Schmidt. (Gaga herself also has a 20 percent stake in the firm.) And considering past proof of Gaga’s digital business savvy, Backplane could prove to be a whole lot more than your average celebrity-endorsed venture.