"Kickstarter is amazing, but one of the hidden catches is that once you have taken a bunch of people's money to do a thing, you have to actually do that thing,

"Kickstarter is amazing, but one of the hidden catches is that once you have taken a bunch of people's money to do a thing, you have to actually do that thing, and not some other thing that you thought up in the meantime." -- this is not strictly true - I mean, kickstarter projects aren't legally obligated to deliver anything at all - so they could certainly decide to do something else. People would likely be very, very angry and call them fraudulent if they changed their idea. Perhaps the point is that Kickstarter backers are investing in an idea (or worse, a product) whereas VCs are investing in the combination of idea + team. At the end of the day, Kickstarter backers want the product you promised, while VCs are pretty happy with you increasing their investment, no matter what road you take to get there.