One of the really interesting things about the entire kickstarter model has been how it doesn't seem so scary to people offering up a kickstarter project. I remember raising the first round of funding at a startup and how "real" it suddenly got when you had a big chunk of someone else's money and some serious expectations there. But I knew people in the dot-com days who got funded and almost immediately blew through their series A on re-designing their workspace and buying awesome chairs and video games for the cafeteria.

One of those weird childhood experiences that I got while growing up in Las Vegas was seeing people suddenly come into what they consider a "lot" of money. Some folks would get meticulous and figure out how long they could make it cover their current expenses, some would spend it in lavishly stupid ways for cheap thrills. The trick is that when you're walking around the models at a car dealership and you realize you could write a check for any car they had on the lot with no haggling, you don't succumb to that. You find the place were you assume you have no money available and work out what the best value is. Easy to say, hard to do.

A friend of mine from Sun cashed out his stock and asked me what he should go out and buy. I suggested he pay off his house. That would translate the money into a monthly 'benefit' in the form of one less bill to pay, and it would save him a ton over the life of the loan which seemed like a pretty reasonable rate of return. He did, and thought it was a really boring use of the windfall. Until 2001.