[Codhisattva]

"The most valuable service kickstarter provides is in gauging real-world interest in your product."

I don't think it even does that as a product can fail to garner interest due to lack of adequate marketing. I think most projects fail because they can never reach their intended audience.

[shawnc]

"The most valuable service kickstarter provides is in gauging real-world interest in your product." Kickstarter doesn't exactly provide this - they provide a place to host a site to gauge that interest. The project creator themselves do all the legwork to get that interest dredged up (as they should).