I am always amused to see "Very Small Private VC founded in N/A

Pittsburgh" in TheFunded.com description of Innovation Works. IW is anything but a private venture capitalist. They are funded primarily by the state of Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin bureaucracy and have altruistic objectives to hand out money and create jobs - not exactly a venture capitalist model. Investors they are not!

Lately IW employees (Lunak, Demmler, Jen, etc) launched an email campaign to beg for letters to be written to Pennsylvania state legislators to drum up support for maintaining IW funding. The letters explicitly state

"This isn't about funding Innovation Works. It's about funding entrepreneurs and growing technology companies."

I laughed when I read that and am not alone in finding great humor in such a disingenuous statement. Of course this campaign is about funding Innovation Works!

IW employees would have tremendous difficulty fending for themselves in the real world of entrepreneurship without the excessive pay and support they receive from the state.