Perhaps worth noting that the U.S. government already has a grant program with approximately this budget range. Pell grants give money to students who need money.

Is it possible that Pell grants already provide more economic return than is possible with a far-fetched-idea plan for a small number of people? Pell grants do help enable education for millions, and as we see in the article & study, education is absolutely correlated with innovation.

I am curious how you propose to vet far fetched ideas in a short amount of time? 30K startups is a lot to review, even if the cycle was continuous and spread out over the year. And far-fetched ideas are difficult to rank and fund. Whether this program works, I imagine, would depend on lot on whether the vetting process reliably allowed in far fetched ideas with real potential and kept out far fetched ideas that have no potential, as well as people who aren’t likely to bring the far fetched idea to fruition.