Someone who's read the terms of use and licensing and all those other jazzy legal documents could correct me if I'm wrong, but is there anything stopping a company from having one of their promises an equity stake in the company?
Say, I'm running a kickstarter and put a tier of funding as "equity". I put aside 10% ownership of my brand to those willing to pay $1,000 or more (for instance). If I set up terms that those who pay above $1k get equity relative to how much they contributed would that be wrong?
An example, 10 people paid $1k to each earn 1% equity in my new company. Or, say 20 people each paid $1k, would get 0.5% each. (20k total, 1k contribution).
Terms are loose, and this is all speculation, but at a theoretical level is there anything wrong with the founders creating such an incentive?
These products or services are not guaranteed by Kickstarter or Kickstartees though, so we backers aren't paying for a product alone. In many cases, the value of the product is not commensurate with the money paid. Notch certainly didn't get his $10000 worth from getting a kit and meeting Carmack—he could have picked up a kit after the campaign and met Carmack at GDC or Quakecon or wherever. It's more akin to donating $100 to PBS and getting a tote bag and a $70 tax write-off, without the write-off. As others have said, it's a charitable donation to a cool project from which backers could possibly get some benefits.
