According to Kickstarter's own metrics (and I'm sure we agree that they're the clear winner in this space), there's been a total of about $1.5B in funds raised

According to Kickstarter's own metrics (and I'm sure we agree that they're the clear winner in this space), there's been a total of about $1.5B in funds raised TOTAL, over the lifetime of the site: https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats https://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats Conversely, there was nearly $30B in VC money committed in 2013 alone: http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/annual-venture-investment-dollars.jhtml http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2014/annual-venture-... So it's not even close to being close. Maybe there's 3x more crowdsourced projects funded than companies backed, but most KS projects are funded for a few thousand dollars.