Re:Pebble smartwatch breaks record for Kickstarter funding
by amirmc on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @05:00PM
(#3854970)
I don't think the analogy is valid. In a 'properly funded' company the people putting money in are sophisticated investors (for the case of private investment) or at least buying something that's supposed to have some financial rigour associated with it (public investment).
The same isn't necessarily true of people funding things on kickstarter. People may not realise/understand that they're actually taking a risk when they fund things (and therefore feel more aggrieved when things don't go as expected).
Re:Pebble smartwatch breaks record for Kickstarter funding
by InclinedPlane on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @05:10PM
(#3855001)
Funny, I don't remember buying stock in Goldman Sachs or GM...
Anyway, I think kickstarter does enough to make sure people understand the risks involved. If anything I'd say kickstarter funders probably have as good a grasp of the level of risk they're taking on as the average new home buyer or 401k program participant. At the end of the day there's only so much hand holding that can reasonably be justified, I think kickstarter is probably pretty close to the appropriate level of such.
The advantage of being small is increased openness and a smaller level of risk if a single project fails. There are lots of properly vetted VC funded startups who are beholden to "hard" deadlines who are burning through $3 million per week, or maybe even per day and yet will ultimately end in failure.