so much FUD around crowdfunding from people that don't know how it works or how to mitigate problems

Everything from the idea of "annoying peons", to the idea of VCs balking at a warped cap table even though the crowd can be grouped together as one

Self limiting.

No, your secretary/answering service does.

While I understand the spirit of your posts, I've learned the hard way that treating investors with less than the respect they deserve is a sure fire way to shoot yourself in the foot. They are often times the first and fastest method to raising additional capital when in a pinch. Naive investor or not.

>treating investors with less than the respect they deserve

Is not having a direct line 24/7 less respect than a investor deserves? Especially one who was invested only a few hundred dollars?

From FINRA, Delaware law and the SEC's perpsrictive, no. If you are not lawfully forthcoming the sanctions and fines will come on swiftly and heavily.

How's this for a good way to evaluate a startup while looking for employment at one: Do they talk crap about investors?

Having seen how you talk about your investors casually, I'm in little hurry to join their number.

This would seem to be a solved problem for publicly traded companies.

Investing $250K in a seed round startup buys you a lot more equity stake than buying $250k of stock in Apple. Publicly traded companies solve this problem by the virtue of their size.

The article is talking about numbers being "a couple of thousand dollars". If you're gonna put $250k in you're probably not going through Indiegogo.