NewsLabs did indeed return some of the money. There are several companies that I could have easily chosen that seem to have done well. It's just that the ones

NewsLabs did indeed return some of the money. There are several companies that I could have easily chosen that seem to have done well. It's just that the ones where you can see in advance that they're going to rock usually aren't looking for small, independent investors without a network of contacts. In fact, by demo day several of them had already taken enough funding from seriously high-prestige investors that they weren't really looking even then. The Etacts guys were very pleasant and personable about that, though, and were still very happy to talk :-) I hope they did get acquired. Go them!