Crowd-funding has really taken off over the last year or so, changing the way anyone from cash strapped manufacturers to aspiring inventors can execute upon their million dollar ideas with relatively little risk for themselves. Besides raising money it has also served as an avenue to get the community involved in the product development process, and – with luck – to build plenty of hype ahead of an actual launch.
According to recently released statistics from Kickstarter, more than 2.2 million people opened their wallets in 2012 to help fund more than 18,000 different campaigns. All together, backers pledged nearly $320 million over the course of the year.
Projects like Ouya, NCase M1, the Pebble smart watch and even a number of films and video games owe their existence to crowd-funding. But not every campaign is a success story and even those projects with thousands of supporters often struggle to live up to expectations or get the product out the door. With that in mind we want to ask: have you ever pledged any money to crowd funded projects? If so, what was it?