Comment by bluGill
3 hours ago
Kickstarter exists. The real problem is most things cost more than the average person should dare risk. Some widget today is worth more than the same tommorow. Most people should not back your eink laptop even though if it existed they would pay more for it.
Yeah it's about trust and risk.
I'm not sure how to align the incentives on that.
For the consumer the ideal case is that the money is not released from the escrow until their product actually arrives.
But that would be overly restrictive, and limit development to companies with significant funds.
Kickstarter has a balance where, you only pledge money after deciding you trust the company.
I think we could do it so the initial fundraiser is provisional. And then everyone would know that some portion of that would fall through. Over time you would learn what the ratio is. If a million is pledged, maybe you can expect 200k to be committed in the final round.
We could even divide it further. There is some portion of users which are more open-minded and enthusiastic. They might be happy to fund a round of crappy prototypes. So in this way smaller players could gain trust and credibility.