Doesn't the success of Kickstarter mean we need to rethink investment laws? I imagine this sort of businesses, where they help start-ups get funding, would explode if people could get equity in the companies. The equity per investor could stay small, so random people don't have much of a say in how the start-up is run.
Kickstarter hasn't really faced many scammers yet, but as it becomes more successful more people will propose projects that they dont intend on fulfilling (and pocketing the money).
How about rethinking investment entirely. Why not just fund projects as open source that will be released to the world. This includes physical objects, designs, and software.
If you were creating a startup, and it would have cost you 1 million dollars of software development cost, 1 million dollars of hosting costs for 10 years, and you expected to earn 1 million dollars profit over 10 years, why not do this instead - ask for 1.5 million dollars on kickstarter - 1 million cost and 500,000 dollar profit. Say that you will be releasing as open source - this is the value you provide to funders. Then sysadmins come in and compete on hosting the software and divide up the other 500,000 dollar profit among themselves. You can move on to other software development projects instead of supporting your startup for 10 years.
Kickstarter et al. have been project-focused and artist-centric primarily in order to get around the "motivations to invest" problem, so passing this could open the gates to a new wave of startups.
