Do you think Kickstarter is a viable alternative to raising equity funding or debt financing? If so, under what circumstances?

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. The idea behind crowdfunding is to raise money from the public (i.e., the crowd) rather than through traditional means.

Kickstarter’s stated mission is to bring creative projects to life. The platform was started in April 2009 by Perry Chen, Charles Adler, and Yancy Strickler. As of April 2017, it had helped raise $3 billion in pledges from 12.7 million donors to fund 123,387 projects. Kickstarter is open to projects based in 21 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. Backers can come from anywhere in the world. While most people think of Kickstarter as a website, it launched a mobile app in February 2013.