15 ms·

Really? How is owning a stake in the venture worth a thousand times more than owning the thing?

• wissler 14y ago
  I can't tell whether you missed my point or are making a nitpicking remark about how I chose to express it. Of course, it's the same cause either way.
• InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Not all ventures necessarily produce tangible products for everyone who might be interested in financing them. For example, I am not a coffee drinker but there was a very interesting kickstarter for an espresso maker (zpm espresso) that I made note of. The people behind it seemed to know what they were about and seemed to have an interesting and novel idea with a lot of potential. For me it would have been a good investment potential, but that wasn't an option. Similarly, someone might come up with a great new idea on how to manufacture carbon composites or build satellites and want crowd funding to help get it off the ground, but they will have more trouble using kickstarter and such-like because they can't deliver the fruits of their project to their supporters the way other projects could. In some ways this is fine, and I think that kickstarter is and should be as much about helping to bring something to fruition as it is about buying things that don't exist yet. However, it is limiting, and it would be very beneficial to many projects if they could provide equity in a venture in exchange for funding. Congress has passed a law which should enable just that, in a limited way, and time will tell how successful such things become.