I think that is what has lead to the dichotomy that the project with the most developers has the least funding.

Developers love working on something groundbreaking and innovative, and they can easily grasp vague, architectural concepts, whereas the most-popular things to fund are simply variants of things someone is already familiar with, or step-wise improvements upon something already existing. They've seen that xyz can make money elsewhere, so bring some of that money here.

Saying we're going to invent new data structures and algorithms and create new markets is a real funding turn-off because nobody knows if it is even possible, if they even understand the concept at all. It's only now, that we've proved the concept and have working models, that we're attracting people interested in funding the project.

Before, everyone was like