I'm not sure exactly what the right analogy is, but although VC is apt in some ways, it's not really appropriate in many other ways. With research the goal is

I'm not sure exactly what the right analogy is, but although VC is apt in some ways, it's not really appropriate in many other ways. With research the goal is accomplishing some project. That is the goal. It's not to become a self-sustaining business because that's not the goal, and there's no way to do that anyway. You're not asking to jumpstart something toward independence, it's more akin to VC where you have to return over and over to the same VCs forever. Moreover, there's pressure to ask those VCs for funds even if your project doesn't need their money, or to ask them for more money than you need, because there's some third party pointing a weapon at you so they can skim off funds. In fact, because independence isn't even possible or relevant, things get weird in terms of whether or not you get actual revenue from customers (ala citations, impact, or whatever). So yeah, it's like VC, but where the VCs don't pay attention to your actual profitability, and instead fund whatever they happen to be interested in, and are really bad at financial management, and you're required to go to them anyway for funds because someone is profiting off of it. A better analogy in my mind is if everyone hired plumbers not to fix their plumbing, but to apply for government money for plumbing projects because those plumbing grants paid handily to the homeowner. Everyone ends up hiring good grant writers and plumbing in the country falls apart.