I'd like to believe that there are many people have a couple thousands dollars that they'd be willing to invest in a startup that seems promising. In the next year, I will theoretically be able to invest in startups via Wefunder...and I am in college with just one startup under my belt. I like to think I understand startups well but given my age and experience, I bet there are people who understand them far better than I do...and far less as well.
Given your age and experience you have NOHTING to loose. Experiment. Fail. Learn. Succeed.
One of my all-time favorite sayings is by Mark Twain: "A man holding a cat by the tail learns something he can learn no other way".
If you think you understand startups enough to risk $1,000, by all means, do it! You will learn something regardless of the outcome. And, frankly, at your age, if you are intelligent about it there are virtually no negatives.
I was only responding to the seemingly-odd assumption that only the "next ring" of investors is what Wefunder is going for--at least that's what I got from pg's response to why he/YC funded Wefunder. To me, there is no way to keep it to only this "next ring" and it doesn't seem that Wefunder is trying to do this. They are trying to appeal to those who are even several "rings" away.
Regarding funding for your venture/s. Forget it. Don't do it. At least not at first. Save money and bootstrap one or a couple of ideas yourself. You will earn you honorary MBA that way. You have to be smart about business before venturing out into a larger domain (unless you have good mentors who can guide you).
Companies like Facebook --where the founders had absolutely zero business experience and zero idea of where the thing was going or how it was going to make money-- are exceptions to the rule. Most businesses require a reasonable grip of business management and the identification of a good business model from the very start. And even with that failure is far more likely than success. So, have fun with it and don't risk too much on each experiment. Once you find something that gains traction take a huge leap and go for it.