[jliptzin]

Regardless of the terms, all of these companies appear to be just terrible investments.

[tormeh]

That's my impression too. Some, like Cringle on Companisto, looks OK-ish, but most of it is crap. At worst it's "delightful" candy subscriptions and at best it's a slightly better implementation of something that already exists.

EDIT: Having just looked at Companisto's page I now get lots of advertisements all over the web from them. So that's why no good start-ups bother with crowd-investing - because the portals take a big fat cut and so the start-up effectively gets a lower valuation.

[brianwawok]

Never stopped terrible products on Kickstarter from goosing thousands of dollars from naive backers.

[justrossthings]

"Youngry" - A newsmedia property built a supplement entrepreneur and professional "entrepreneurial-advice" entrepreneur that aims to make money by creating sponsored content and e-commerce products (webinars, digital books) for early-stage, young entrepreneurs.