I am not sure whether this funding drive is actually meant to succeed. Let me search my tinfoil hat before continuing... When talking with VCs, mass-market and

I am not sure whether this funding drive is actually meant to succeed. Let me search my tinfoil hat before continuing... When talking with VCs, mass-market and transaction-based is always a tough sell. So why not try a funding drive that might not succeed, but show a good amount of interest? You get 2 things out of it: a) Contacts of people actually wanting to buy your product and are vocal about it. b) Proof that there is interested in your concept. Especially in the social network space, where fees are something rather unheard of, you won't be able to sell "like Twitter, but with payed accounts" very well. Then again, I regularly meet people that would like to pay for their Twitter account for certain benefits (like being able to verify their account instead of hoping that Twitter deems their request worthy). So this funding drive looks like a proof-of-concept to me much more than a success or die action.