Not in this case though, nowhere does he claim he'll give away the motherboards to those that donate, he just says he's offering a "great kick-starter launch price" which implies you might get a bit of discount if you donate.
Also given most kickstarters allow you to donate anything over X how would is it fair if someone who donated $10 gets the same 'gift' as someone who donated $100?
Not really, when you pre-order you know the product is coming. There is no guarantee this thing will ever be made. I suspect no one gets their money back if things go **** up.
But presuming they make a profit on every donation then the more donations they get the more free money they get. It still means them pocketing donated money.
Furthermore the money is to get the item produced, not to cover the cost of individual per unit production once it's up and running. In other words, it'll cost them $89,000 just to get the machines set up and ready to go, and it's that money they are asking for.
Once the machine is up and running, I'd suspect the per unit cost would be pretty low after that meaning surplus money becomes ever more profitable
If there is demand, and you have a good product there is no reason they can't find an investor like everyone else does.
I guess what annoys me about these things is I recently heard about a guy named James Rolfe who wanted to make a movie based on his internet character 'The Angry Video Game Nerd". Anyway, he did a kickstarter to get the money he needed to make the film but he got $100k more than he asked for. Since then he has never told anyone what happened to that $100k, the presumption is he just pocketed it.
