Recent example: a young guy did his PhD, invented couple cool algorithms in video processing area and got Million Euro grant to commercialize the project. The algorithms were cool, but the clients the PhD guy targeted didn’t care about price at all. The guy spent all the money and failed.

Inventing is one thing, commercializing invention - totally different. Population doing inventions has no clue how to make business even with money. Regarding funding, it’s just not there. What is seed stage in Germany, is series A or even B in USA. If founder can bootstrap until series B size, he probably will not take money from outside anymore.