Well, I have been supporting startups even before Kickstarter and Indiego. Unfortunately Carbike never came into life, all my money was lost.
But if you think that science + arts are important, you can’t stop funding interesting projects. I even sold devices later for some unexpected problems (CloudFTP, The Nutter) or could not access the expected video projects (Bikes vs Cars).
But I see crowdfunding more like an altruistic way to support good ideas and do not feel scammed as many Zano backers.
Even right now where again two of my backed projects are in troubled water (Kraftwerk and Itraq) I see this as an experiment where I am not looking for revenues, at least not in the first instance. But maybe I would appreciate deadlines from the grant holders and any reason why they could not be met. And of course a note when the project is being dead.