Agreed. This is a "gamble to win a product that you want" game, not a "gamble to win a stake in a company that you like" game. The very product-based focus of the transaction is intended to discourage thinking of it as an investment. I think Notch was perfectly reasonable in his analysis. He got the product that he wanted, but was disappointed that their tactics after fulfillment were to cash out and align their direction with Facebook's. And he doesn't trust facebook.

Well, I think both yes and no.

I think many people _do_ give to kickstarter campaigns when it's a group of people they _feel like helping_. This is a bigger part of non-technology project kickstarter transactions, but I think it's probably a part of technology projects too, as can perhaps be seen in the way they are pitched on their project pages, or how funders respond to them -- obviously Notch didn't give $10k just as a 'pre-order'.

It's not _just_ "I want to pre-order this not yet existing tech thing which hopefully will exist", it's also "I want to help these guys succeed, I understand they're scrappy nobody's who might not be able to do it without me, I'm willing to take on some risk and perhaps pay a premium in part because I want to help them, and I know they're taking on risk themselves." It's not about equity, in fact it's more... charitable? Solidaritous? Helpful?... than equity.

I mean, consider, if Facebook itself started a kickstarter project to fund some new device or platform -- do you think people would fund it on facebook?

I think it's both predictable and understandable people feel 'sold out' when they thought they were funding some scrappy strivers who were putting themselves on the line for the project too, only to have those scrappy strivers make a huge amount of cash by selling out to major corporation -- before the product you thought you were helping to make possible was even finished.