if a startup is doing highly nascent and deep technical research (and then open sources that research) how/why are they raising from vc’s? 

-there usually isn’t a product
-unlikely that they can reach high revenue metrics

is the goal to be acquired by a company? to release a token?

or is there simply a lack of a third avenue for research groups to be highly experimental… there should probably be more long term accelerator programs that isn’t attached to an academic institution

focused research organizations are one org structure that can plug this gap, still nascent and developing as a direction

convergentresearch.org is developing this framework for interdisciplinary sciences, would like to see something like this in the ethereum ecosystem