[slx26]

I like your comment. I think this point you mention is very relevant for more complex cases:

> if you expect that your pledge will meaningfully contribute to the threshold being reached

Kickstarter solves the coordination problem for their case (which is great), but coordination is harder or easier depending on the scale. Kickstarter here deals with a "rather simple" coordination problem: value proposition and conditions are very clear and straightforward, risks are low, there are no opposing parties / colliding interests, and thresholds are low enough that individual contributions can be quite meaningful. So even if they have an interesting business around solving that coordination problem, and they managed to reach the critical mass for it to work (which I highlight as trickier than the actual software)... as programmers would say, the solution doesn't generalize. (Even if it might be a good place to start looking).