This is just a dispute over terminology, but to succeed is to achieve an aim or purpose; unless your aim is simply to raise money, you haven't achieved success

This is just a dispute over terminology, but to succeed is to achieve an aim or purpose; unless your aim is simply to raise money, you haven't achieved success at that stage. Even if, for the sake of argument, we take your definition of success as simply a positive event, I would dispute the implication that raising $13m in this manner is necessarily a positive event. The inventor hasn't accrued $13m with no strings attached; he has accepted the money in lieu of an obligation to deliver product. Whether entering into such an exchange is a "positive event" or not for the inventor depends on whether he can uphold his end of the bargain.