Projects like Ethereum, Tezos, and EOS have raised massive amounts of money, and are also facing public scrutiny from angsty investors. Both are undesirable when the product is so immature (true for all 3). h/t
Raising lots of money messes with incentives and focus. Capital Allocation is a hugely underrated skill set with CEOs and a key indicator of success. Hard to do that effectively with some massive warchests. (The Outsiders)
https://www.amazon.com/Outsiders-Unconventional-Radically-Rational-Blueprint/dp/1422162672
Additionally, public investors are a whole new group of stakeholders, and hugely complicate the governance and decision making process. It makes rapid iteration and agility much harder. Ethereum's transition to PoS would be much easier in a small, contained environment.
Real world parallels in equity markets: size of Hedge Funds "They find a negative relationship between fund size and return, except in the case of smaller funds (20th percentile and below)"
The complications and scrutiny involved with having public shareholders is also why companies take so long to go public (uber, spacex, Palantir, etc.) ""Creating the technology needed to establish life on Mars is and always has been the fundamental goal of SpaceX. If being a public company diminishes that likelihood, then we should not do so until Mars is secure." - Elon Musk
Vitalik Buterin and co. actively dislike the speculative interest in Ethereum because it directly impedes their ability to the protocol. The 2017 ICO bubble is an unfortunate side effect of making it so accessible to make DAPPs
Similarly, Tezos Foundation and EOS_io are raising massive amounts off the bat, but starting with a smaller fundraise in less of a public eye probably could increases chances of long term success.
If you're building for the long term stability and integrity of the protocol, start small, with low fanfare to increase your chances.
Imagine if Facebook went public back in 2005, and raised 1 billion dollars, how could they add new features and make large changes?
Imagine if the layers of the internet stack (tcp/ip, html) had public stakeholders from Day 1 before the product launch. Makes it much harder to iterate and pivot.