I'd like to respond to the last paragraph, which seems like the relevant point for a startup audience. "It was too easy for them; they were too successful rais

I'd like to respond to the last paragraph, which seems like the relevant point for a startup audience. "It was too easy for them; they were too successful raising money. If they'd had to grow the company gradually, by iterating through several versions they sold to real users, they'd have learned pretty quickly that people looked stupid riding them." This is less an issue of funding and more an issue of their belief that they would make a "new cool"/"paradigm shift"/"disruptive tech." Although this might often be correlated with funding, I think that's because funded disruptive technologies are the ones that make waves (heh). Segway was a company that had the balls to believe that cities would change shape for them; it seems ludicrous to think that looking silly (now) would pose much of a threat to their confidence, money or not. So instead of pg's conclusion that it was the funding that inhibited them, I suggest it's the very nature of disruptive technologies. Some of these fail and we laugh about it; others actually change the fabric of modern life. In fact, perhaps it's because they had such a big, outrageous dream that they captured the public imagination (and possibly funding). Outrageous propositions like "technology that changes the shape of industrialized cities" are the sort of black-swan-esque gamble that VCs seem to adore. (Nicholas Taleb's extremistan / pareto principle) Not to mention that it makes a great story for the media.