Well, we're crowd funding an open source email client. Maybe it's not how these things have been done in the past but I'm happy to pay in advance to get someone to else to do most of the build. I can hack on it once it's more mature and stable.

If you have a SaaS app that's not open source and you're making money off then it's probably not going to be so successful in the crowd-funding arena - but you're still welcome to try.

> If I'm having trouble financing the development new features for my SaaS application, should I just create a funding project for it?

Sure, why not? No one is stopping you.

> I wish someone could explain this phenomenon to me.

Many people invest small amounts of money in a person or group of people. There are risks, like any investment, and the payoff is a product which the investors will find useful or entertaining.

it is not really an investment, it is more like charity... you more then likely never get more then what you paid for and you have a risk of loosing it all.

> you more then likely never get more then what you paid for

They tell you beforehand exactly what the payoff will be. If that doesn't sound economical to you, you don't pay in. There's absolutely no deception here. There's no promise of riches. There's just a promise of a product that is worth what you paid for it.

> and you have a risk of loosing it all.

...which is exactly like every other investment in the history of commerce.

But you have 0 chance of getting back more then what you spent, unlike an investment (the reward is always worth less then what you spent, if you think about it as an investment).

People have the option of paying people to work on projects. I don't see why this is so complicated. If you want to try to get people to crowd fund your project then go ahead and try. If you don't think someone else's project is worthwhile then don't contribute to it.

if you think there's potential demand for your product from the sorts of people who fund projects, then by all means you should ask.