Have you considered that its a much larger job than someone can just bootstrap? Also, Node itself was initially sponsored by a corporate entity, and it lead to considerable problems as well. Now it has backing in many other ways.

Also, are you aware that Deno is being built by literally the creator of Node? This isn't some get rich quick scheme - its something that he deeply wants to see exist. He's also leading the charge against Oracle (a genuine parasite) for the copyright/trademark of Javascript.