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Re:The ugly side of Kickstarter by defen on Sunday April 22, 2012 @12:58PM (#3875348)
Do you know how much of a nightmare it would be for a small startup to deal with thousands of effectively anonymous investors, each of whom has only invested a few tens or hundreds of dollars? You have to deal with voting rights, transfer of equity, shareholder lawsuits, etc, of people who you have no previous contact with and no way to vet. What's to stop a competitor from "investing" in your company to gain access to your financials? It just doesn't seem like the risks and costs are worth the reward.
Re:The ugly side of Kickstarter by gus_massa on Sunday April 22, 2012 @02:57PM (#3875703)
And another problem is that most of them are not "accredited investors".

From: http://paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html

  The SEC defines an "accredited investor" as someone
  with over a million dollars in liquid assets or an
  income of over $200,000 a year. The regulatory burden
  is much lower if a company's shareholders are all
  accredited investors. Once you take money from the
  general public you're more restricted in what 
  you can do. [1]
Re:The ugly side of Kickstarter by rpwilcox on Sunday April 22, 2012 @06:12PM (#3876281)
I don't think that matters, in the post JOBS act world (in the US)