I'm quite surprised at the number of people who have just said "marketing". I don't doubt that's part of it but even without it I think it's a fairly solid idea

I'm quite surprised at the number of people who have just said "marketing". I don't doubt that's part of it but even without it I think it's a fairly solid idea. Kickstarter have all the right tools for selling and a proven capacity to scale well. They've sold over 4 million dollars worth to over 20 thousand people in three hours without any hassle. They're handling all the user management, accounts, live updating figures, "stock" and payments. How much would it have cost them if right at the peak their site went down for 2 hours? Or people weren't sure if their order was accepted? Could it cost them 5% of their orders minus the amount it would have cost them to build on their own? How long would it take to have built and tested their own site to handle the load of orders (and given that they only see this peak for a short period after launch). Plus of course marketing and the fact that a lot of people already have a kickstarter account (reducing even more the barrier between "oh cool" and clicking buy).