Long-Term Planned-Handoff Startups

What are the opinions here about funding scientific research? I have been coming back to the idea every few weeks and thought I would mention it here to see what people think. Why not fund some research that has an expected long term payoff, and then rather than expecting a product after 6 months, expect to have enough promising research progress to hand it off to another investor after a year or two, and then they plan to do the same thing, until after three or more stages the startup would finally launch. Until it launches all the research would be kept secret of course.