Can't say I'm surprised. Google took a ton of heat from shareholders when they announced their self driving car project. It was widely considered to be a frivolous waste of money that would end in failure, was initiated because the engineers thought it would be fun, AND didn't have a "solid" business plan. Look at it now. Their prototypes work. They will only get better. And they opened up a potentially billion dollar market. Can you imagine a world where congestion and collisions no longer exist? Yea, that'll be fucking awesome, and due to some healthy risk taking that is completely uncharacteristic of a publicly traded company, it's in our immediate future.
Definitely. The options are limited. However, as silly as this sounds, crowdfunding is becoming more viable. While at the moment it accounts for next to nothing in terms of how much capital is being injected into companies, it's growing. Maybe in the distant future, or maybe it'll always be a niche.