My understanding is that doing this is complicated because selling securities which are not tradeable on open liquid markets to non-accredited individuals is fr

My understanding is that doing this is complicated because selling securities which are not tradeable on open liquid markets to non-accredited individuals is frowned upon by the SEC (and similar entities in the EU). That's not to say that it's impossible to do: there's just a legal thicket to navigate & the legislators have teeth! (This might be why VCs have stayed away? They must have been pitched this idea over and over again in the last couple of years. Of course funding a competitor for your own revenue stream might not be something that your average VC is going to do either :) ) Kickstarter is fantastic for funding things which are ready to go but just need the capital to pay for volume manufacture up front. If the product isn't ready to ship in that form & their asking for funding to get it into that state then it's much more risky. I've funded things on kickstarter which were pretty much "I'd like to print this comic / book / whatever, if I can get a bunch of pre-orders in up front then everyone wins." Kickstarter is amazing for those kind of creator-driven projects.