One thing for a software or services based company, but if you are a product based company that needs significant capital investment to get production started, and you haven't got any credit history to be able to get a bank loan, then crowd funding seems to be a legitimate way to go. Plus you get the added bonus of getting marketplace validation from your actual customers if they fork out the money to subscribe to you.

First responder to this thread was pretty much lambasting all projects that opt for the crowd funding pathway, which I think is a grossly unfair judgement call.