I've had 3 friends use Indiegogo campaigns to raise money for various purposes. One I was okay with, but the other 2 left a bad taste in my mouth.
The first friend wanted to raise money to pay for adoption costs. She raised what she needed (around $10,000) but when the adoption fell through, she volunteered to give the money back. I feel the most okay about this one, particularly because of the refund offer.
The second is a lawyer friend who wanted to fund a medical research startup focusing on a rare brain cancer. He wanted to raise $150,000, which I thought was totally unrealistic from a few different perspectives: (1) medical startups cost WAY more than that so it wasn't nearly enough; (2) he had no business plan and only vague descriptions of what the company was actually going to do; (3) he had no seed funding, matching funds, or grant applications pending from any institutions which said either he's not serious about this, or there is just not going to be enough support or interest from the research community to keep this going once it's started; and (4) he really thought he would raise that kind of cash from his friends and family? Insane! As it is, we contributed something like $25 or $50 - to not be asshole friends - and I was not surprised AT ALL to learn that he raised less than $5000 total. Which made me wonder how he used the $5k. Guess what I got in the mail a few months later? A freaking awareness bracelet. Useless. (And btw shouldn't he have ethically returned that money to his "investors"? How on earth did $5000 get him ANYWHERE?) By the way we're not in touch anymore, on our end particularly because of this episode.
The third is a friend in the music recording business who wants to raise $2000 to buy an Apple laptop to make it easier for him to travel to, and record, his clients on-site. I think this is, arguably, the most questionable of the three campaigns. If this is a profit-seeking business you want to start/support, then put some freaking skin in the game and either purchase the damn computer yourself, or get a business loan and plan to repay it from your proceeds.
What do others think about crowd funding?