Is the funding goal about the financial significance? I'd argue it's more about the significance of proving there are 10,000 paid members as the foundation for the community (a notion of PG's that Dalton has referenced).

I'm a backer, and I'd argue the brilliance of this is two-fold: Dalton gets to spend a month to see if there is enough demand to build this out for an initial community (instead of 8 months finding out the hard way), and us as backers will only be charged if there is a critical mass of interesting folks to launch the community.

Neither of these are about the financial significance of $500,000 or $200,000 for that matter.