[…] Startups and even larger companies are now looking to crowdfunding sites to serve other business functions, from market research and product design to customer relations and manufacturing negotiations.

“Crowdfunding is the ultimate form of consumer research,” says Scott Popma, an intellectual-property lawyer who advises companies about crowdfunding. “You are not just asking people’s opinions—you are getting opinions with their money.”

MIT Technology Review

This squares quite nicely with a lot of conversations I have had with friends recently.

It’s my opinion that Kickstarter will increasingly work less for acquiring funds for complete funding of endeavours, but instead will be used to indicate pent-up market demand to justify larger down-stream investments from more conventional capital sources. The importance of Kickstarter lies in giving numbers to the classic VC questions of: “Who would use this?” and “How many of them are there?”.