Kickstarter = inventor funding

Kickstarter is a micro-investing website where you can post a project and ask the online world (and your friends and family) for funding.
The project you post has to be a “doing” project. Kickstarter doesn’t accept “fund my life” fundraisers.
Some of the projects asking for funding are Product Design projects. This is great because you can do your market research while you ask for backers. If the Product Design project isn’t backed, it could be a conclusion that it is unlikely to sell. Every project offers backer rewards. Many of the Product Design projects offer a first run of the product.
Better to find out that the world outside your head doesn’t want to buy it before you invest a lot of time and money into engineering and manufacturing it.

I just backed this project: an Upstate NY artist, Zac Shavrick, is making steel sculptures of people. Weird, monster-y sculptures. YEAH! I love it!