I think the beauty of kickstart is that you lose you money, but in most cases you lose very little. Professional VC and backers know not every project ends up where you want. Not everyone succeeds. This way you lose a little money if it doesn't instead of a professional VC taking thousands on a flawed ide see groupon or pets.com. I doubt you would ever lose your shirt over a failed kickstart investment matter a fact backing for more than some extra money you have laying around complete defeats the purpose.
You lose very little, sure, but you never gain any money.
Using this logic, one should just play the lottery because hey its only a buck and the EV, while a sucker's bet, is still better than any Kickstarter project.
