funders

Either Mozilla makes a browser for its users, or it makes a privacy invasion tool for its funders.

To change the culture, you need to change the attitude of either the founders or the funders.

The third-party funders wrote their checks directly to the Smithsonian, which was the grant recipient.

In the end, raising money is a founders' bet that the funders are trustworthy.

Sequoia gets the best deals, and crowd-funders get adversely selected into crappier deals.

Apart from nomenclature these aren't really startups and their funders aren't really VCs.

Whatever disfunction exists in VC (I'm sure some does) is an opportunity for funders who specialize in funding women.

By contrast self-funders often labor in obscurity, sometimes poverty for years.

What I find most useful about SW is in tracking associations and relationships between sources and groups / organizations / funders.

Are their taxpaying funders now somehow their subjugated and subservient peoples?

I can imagine also the ease of having to only deal with a limited pool of private funders - all of whom are known quantities vs.

Indeed I wish the non-profit sector had more of the startup culture - it's extremely hard for us and other small non-profits to get funded as the sector is dominated by traditional NGOs and very conservative funders.

One would think that grant funders would insist on a review of known failures, before funding "new" research.

Are their funders really "VCs" in the classic sense when the amount they invest is =< $100K and they can't participate in future rounds?

If there's an argument to be had here, it's an argument about where the line should be drawn between "acceptable" and "never acceptable." Reddit's in favor of moving the line to acquire more interest from the outside world---a world that has generally (read: "in the markets Reddit's funders care about") categorized revenge porn and overt racism to be never acceptable.