Well, that sucks.

I was psyched when I first read the subject, since I figured they'd be lending Google Docs their awesome text editor. Instead they're going to Google Wave, where the interface blows. Etherpad's lightyears more useful, more flexible, and more valuable. Blah.

"80 - Active (25 having received further investment rounds)"

The internal contradiction here should have set off some alarms. Are the other 55 supposed to have made it to profitability without raising any further money?

According to our records, 89 of 144 startups we funded up to this summer are still alive, for some definition of alive. When startups die, they usually die gradually, so it's hard to say when a startup is actually dead.

Some other mistakes I noticed: Nearly all cycles have the wrong number of startups. The furthest off is W07, which he lists has having had 15 startups but actually had 12. There have been two mergers, not one (Ninite is also a merger). YouOS didn't die; it morphed into Project Wedding, which was acquired. 8aweek didn't die either; that's now SocialBrowse. Nambii and pocketfungames are the same company, as were Boso and Auctomatic. Chatterous, iJigg, and Ididwork are all still alive. There's at least one startup listed as active that has been acquired, but it may not be public knowledge.

I've never heard of Innovation Fuels.

It doesn't seem fair to accuse us of "lack of transparency." Every startup launches publicly when they're ready, after which we list them on our site. It wouldn't be appropriate to list them before they've launched (or more precisely, it would launch them). We're usually not supposed to disclose when they raise additional funding or get acquired. And we're not always sure till long after the fact when they die.

Agreed. When Google Wave first came out part of me thought, "Shit, this could kill Etherpad". Then I tried Google Wave and realized that Etherpad was completely safe. I guessed wrong, Google still killed it.

Eh. I get taxed fully for everything that gets paid to me. (That annual 5%.) That doesn't avoid taxes at all.

Only what will never touch my hands (direct from purchase-event to charity) avoids taxes.

So this was just a way of making sure as much of it as possible never touches my hands.

(As compared to passing-through me: taking it as income then giving it back out again.)