As I look at the total pledge amount climbing higher and higher, at $5.5m presently, I can't help but think that VCs and bankers got completely cut out of the "deal". It used to be that you had to please a whole bunch of finance guys to get anything done, but this time they weren't even invited to the table. It's a big change.
I also keep thinking about other ways in which the financial sector can get disintermediated. Bootstrapping is always an option, if a very long and arduous one. To speed things up there is Kickstarter in b2c, but what about b2b? Are there ways to get the future beneficiaries of a new b2b product to fund its development, and that don't involve spending 6 month to raise funding? It always bothered me that funding decisions are usually made by people who know a lot about finance and, as a rule, very little about the target market. Surely there is a lot of potential there for the insiders of the target industry?
I also keep thinking about other ways in which the financial sector can get disintermediated. Bootstrapping is always an option, if a very long and arduous one. To speed things up there is Kickstarter in b2c, but what about b2b? Are there ways to get the future beneficiaries of a new b2b product to fund its development, and that don't involve spending 6 month to raise funding? It always bothered me that funding decisions are usually made by people who know a lot about finance and, as a rule, very little about the target market. Surely there is a lot of potential there for the insiders of the target industry?