This is just data that matches previously expressed intuition. There are literally millions of un- or under- funded ideas out there that want to be companies.<p>When you realize how much money the various public lotteries bring in every day, you can see that any idea that can skim off a nominal amount of "disposable" income from people who wish they were rich is going to do just that.<p>This is why I have always been opposed to loosening up the regulations around crowd funding investment. At least with a gizmo you get a gizmo, but for 99.9% of the people who have crowd-funded companies (according to the article, 1 in 1000 have been sold) do not have any return at all.<p>The part that annoys me is that it creates what is essentially a legitimate place for con artists to practice their skills, and enrich themselves, with no recourse for the investors. And as a result any "good" that might have come from allowing deserving companies to get access to a new pool of capital, you end up with a few bad apples enriching themselves and soiling the waters for everyone.