Didn't Maidsafe do like $8 million in 24 or 48 hours? Some success that was. We later found out that most of the IPO funds came from MtGox bots laundering stolen money. I wonder if Ethereum will be getting laundered Bitcoins too? I was one of the first to see the Ethereum presale thread and by then they already had a million (from where? the thread barely had any views and there were no news articles about it on Google. Who threw in a million so fast?)
Ethereum is a copywrighting coin (journalist coin) like Max Coin and Mastercoin, they pump out these essay articles and hour long boring videos that are only seen by hundreds (with the odd video or two with a few thousand fews). Between Vitalik flying around the world and partying and doing hour+ long interviews, where he has the time to develop anything. But, then again, if he's a full time mascot for Goldman Sachs' they probably outsourced the development to India.
Ethereum is on record for stating it wants a $30 million IPO back in January. If I put in $1000 - that gives me 0.0000033% (that's five zeros) of all Ethereum. Just to see a return of 100x Ethereum would have to hit $3 billion which is easier said than done. I don't think a coin can go anywhere if it's a ponzi scheme ran by rich investors. There's nothing to incentive early adopters to come on board to use the coin.
As for the Ethereum language bull$hit.. It took a good decade for C++ and Java to work out all the bugs and to have a community of developers, nobody but Vitalik knows how to program in his supposed Ethereum and I bet its' bugged. As for Ether itself, it's still on generation 1.0 format of PoW / PoS hybrid (Peercoin has been doing that for ages). Ethereum seems like it's more geared to take on 1.0 coins than to compete with any 2.0 coins out there.