The editor of VIsual Basic Programmers Journal did a short history of the challenges of VB. Some interesting items.

1) VFP gurus had a big impact on VB
"VB's heroes come in many shapes and from some unlikely places. One rarely acknowledged hero: Visual FoxPro, which Microsoft acquired in 1992. Several of the people who were responsible for adding inheritance and many other features to FoxPro eventually joined the VB team, including Rob Copeland, Drew Fletcher, and the tenacious Eric Rudder. This group played a critical role in a dev team transitioning from VB3's 16-bit programming world to VB4's 32-bit-programming, classes, OLE Automation, and COM."

2) VB was almost absorbed by the Office Team
"The VB4 team had to fight other departments in Microsoft along the way and fend off a hostile takeover from the Office team. The Office team controlled VB's close cousin, Access, and wanted to add to VB its tools collection as a universal scripting language that could tie together the pieces of the Office suite. So the Office team pressured the VB team to "dumb down" the language and make it easier for less-experienced programmers to create applications."

http://www.vbpj.com/upload/free/features/vbpj/2001/07jul01/en0107/en0107.asp