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There are many well funded companies taking advantage of the Kicstarter platform to run their product/market fit experiments and generating media buzz while the

There are many well funded companies taking advantage of the Kicstarter platform to run their product/market fit experiments and generating media buzz while they are it. If you think about it it's actually really smart on their part, but shady nonetheless. Reading some of their backer reactions on Kickstarter and all across the interwebz one gets the feeling that this will most certainly have a negative impact in the short term, but hopefully these same backers will start doing more research into the people unscrupulously soliciting money when in fact they don't really need it at all.

ubercore 13y ago
It doesn't feel shady to me, as long as one remembers you're _buying just that particular product_. I'm really happy to have the chance to support even a major company experimenting if it provides a product more suited to me than they could have done without crowdfunding. The real tension in my eyes is that the most effective kickstarters seem to be ones that get people emotionally involved or attached some way. Joining a "revolution", or playing on nostalgia or a sense of community. It makes an effective kickstarter, but can lead to trouble in cases like Oculus where (even though they didn't and never did), people felt like they owned a small part of Oculus for kickstarting it.
- mathattack 13y ago
  True - it's about an early right to buy the product, not the company. I have to keep reminding myself that. Do the kickstarter participants feel the same way?