[st3fan]

"Why do some of the recipients of Mozilla money appear to be nothing more than empty shells of companies — not even having a simple website?"

This is exactly how many readers here at hacker news also run their business: you need an official entity to receive money.

And if you are doing something interesting that the Mozilla Foundation would like to support with a grand for example then you will need to have that "empty shell" because if you receive funding for a project personally you will be taxed the shit out of it and lose many benefits. There is literally nothing special about this.