Kickstarter is Debt
Just to be clear though debt is actually a preferred type of financing because it is one of the cheapest forms.A venture investor is expecting a 10x return on their investment.  That means they are expected a much greater realized interest rate than debt - money that effective comes out of the pockets of the business owners.If you can get debt, if is often preferred if you can figure out how to manage the default risk.You do not give up equity (which could be worth a massive amount), rather you only have to pay back the debt at some future time with some much minor interest.Also interest is often tax deductable, thus debt has further tax advantages.One Nobel winning economic theory leads to an optimal capital structure of 100% debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modigliani%E2%80%93Miller_theo...Example: Apple is buying back shares (the opposite of equity funding), while issuing massive amounts of debt.