Think of a Kickstarter donation as a stock purchase. Sure, it may not feel much like investing in a Fortune 500 company, since you have a more intimate connection to the venture's key figures. And when someone begs you for money to make a creative dream come true, you can get a bit emotional about the endeavor-far more emotional than you could ever get about ConAgra's changes to Chef Boyardee pasta. But don't be fooled: You're just an investor, not a member of the family. And that means you need to accept a certain amount of risk. "If you're thinking of yourself as a customer instead of an investor, you're probably choosing the wrong venue," says Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School who has analyzed nearly 50,000 Kickstarter projects. "This is not Amazon."
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