True enough, but you also have to take into account that for anything in the physical world the risk profile just goes up up up. It took them 8,000 lab hours to make what they wanted. It could've just as well taken them 16,000 hours to make a product that's only half as good as sugru is, not because of a bad team or a crappy idea but because molecules simply don't always do what you want them to do.
The going rate for just wages on a team that size for 6 months would be in the order of 100-200 thousand, plus all the lab equipment, supplies and whatnot.
Not to mention most investors would see the idea as some form of play-dough and balk at the idea.
