I don’t think your comparison is completely fair.
- 2014: Novena → $780k
- 2015: Librem 15 → $590k
- 2015: Librem 13 → $460k
You could also look at it that way: Some market saturation led to a decline in investments. You could also argue that both Librems target the same audience, so they got > $1,000,000, outnumbering the Novena. Also, higher absolute prices probably get you less pledges. So, it’s a bit arbitrary whom to declare as winner.
I’m also not so sure how sustainable the Novena is. Was it a crowd funding hype, or are they still selling numbers in a range fitting to the funding success? I’ve recently speculated here that Purism likely sells 500+ laptops per month, and likely growing.
To me, it’s a good sign that some want Purism to be even more bleeding edge while others whine it’s not OpenHardware enough. They will get both fixed as they grow. It’s likely that there will be a second laptop line with ARM or RISC-V chips, and eventually the Intel-laptops will be completely deblobbed. I mean, they are really close already.
Speaking for my house, there is potential to ~5 laptops plus ~5 phones plus ~5 routers/NAS devices from Purism, as they hopefully will expand in that direction (see link above).
And maybe one Novena for my sons. Or I get them 5 or 10 Raspberries and save some money 
Don’t get me wrong, I like that project. Just don’t have real use for it. I think Purism has just the right amount of pragmatism. Let’s look back in 5…10 years who had more impact: Purism or Novena.
So far we only talked about nerds and the “general public”. But there’s also companies. Just like the nerd who wants his relatives to be safe (and save himself some trouble), there are admins out there who know that their colleagues can do everything they have to with a Librem and be safer than with a Windows laptop. I’m pretty sure a fair amount of Librems go to companies who order them in batches. That will likely be the biggest area of growth before actually being in a position to place them at BestBuy.
Well… the Librem 5 will have a USB-C, the current Librem 13 also, and the first one already had USB 3. According to your link, USB 3 already is a nightmare, but USB 2 is not much better. You might want to discuss that with Kyle Rankin and Nicole Faerber, if they are aware of those problems and if they have plans to improve here. It does not sound like an unsolvable problem. Like, power down the ports unless explicitly activated.