If you believe Blender is sufficiently able to do what the others can in a fashion as intuitive as those, then the answer to your question is "marketing", as th

If you believe Blender is sufficiently able to do what the others can in a fashion as intuitive as those, then the answer to your question is "marketing", as the money would allow Blender to show this to a wider audience. In that respect, Maya being more popular isn't circular reasoning, it's an expression of the exact thing the money can help change, through one method or another.