I never saw the economics of crowdfunding before, but this confirms what I suspected: crowdfunding isn't really about getting your project funded by the crowd,

I never saw the economics of crowdfunding before, but this confirms what I suspected: crowdfunding isn't really about getting your project funded by the crowd, but about buying a structured platform to launch from. It looks like a 10% non-refundable deposit is the entry ticket, plus a bunch of non-refundable marketing work on top. And you can't tell the truth about how much money you actually need for fear of not hitting your target. I'm not saying there's a problem here, but this isn't how I envisioned crowdfunding in the beginning. I thought it was a promising way for makers without money to get started. But it seems it's become a place for people with money to advertise and execute market analytics.