In my opinion, this is a tactic used when a company has less than maximum confidence in the product and want to test the water. Ie. It could be a great success

In my opinion, this is a tactic used when a company has less than maximum confidence in the product and want to test the water. Ie. It could be a great success and they will charge you $$$, or a complete failure and they will drop the product, or a "just ok" success, maybe due to the product itself being "ok". Even then best of these outcomes is not good (considering the risk of investing in the product early), so if they are not confident to charge 100%, I would not invest any significant time/resource into something like this. I'm out.