If you're genuinely serious, do you happen to have $100k to invest in other projects? Because I have lots of ideas. Website in profile.
Winamp has a return on investment (a slow one but still a return), your ideas on the other hand are a gamble. I don't mean to discourage you I just want to save you some time. Also asking random people to invest in your ideas is also illegal. You have to have a pre-existing relationship with someone /or/ join a community like AngleList to solicit investment. Angel investors also must have an income over a certain amount of money. Some of these laws may change in the near future with crowd funding becoming so popular but in the mean time be careful.
1) You learn something new every day.
2) I don't want to live on this planet any more.
If you have $100,000 to buy a software mp3 player chances are you're not the type of person the SEC is trying to protect from bad investments. So shhhhhh, we'll just keep quiet.
Here's an example: https://angel.co/makespace?ref=startup_card
If you set up an event like "demo day" at Y-Combinator where investors and founders meet and discuss equity and terms that's perfectly legal. That's NOT general solicitation. Everyone there knows what they're getting themselves into. No one can be "tricked" into investing like the general public can.
Are my ideas on how to proceed correct? I'm not sure--perhaps I should validate on my own. I can't afford to scale yet (time and money), so perhaps I should seek to "wow" and then seek interest. I can at least do that on my own.
That said, your post was really insightful. As another already mentioned, I wasn't aware about the solicitation rule.
Think of how gullible the average American is (look at all the things infomercials convince them to buy) If it weren't for that rule a lot of innocent people would lose their life savings because a lot of them 1) believe in the goodness of people and 2) don't understand finance or investing.
Those rules were created to prevent your old folks from investing in a miracle snake oil business or a new hair growth tonic business from a traveling salesman.
People can pay $5,000 for a prototype of a drone they helped back on Kickstarter but that $5,000 is not equity, nor a gamble. It's a donation. The backer knows they are kissing that $5,000 good bye and are only given a chance at receiving a prototype drone. It's a donation with a gift.
An investment is when there is an expected return. I put in $5,000 but I expect to one day receive that $5,000 or more back. I own a tiny piece of the company. To help the average person know what they're getting themselves into the SEC has specified rules that a company must follow in order to solicit and accept public investors (aka going public / IPO). They MUST release certain financial information at certain time intervals, they must use certain accounting methods so as to not hide money, not hide profit, not hide losses, and discourage insider trading, etc...
If a company hides losses it causes a huge mess (ENRON).
So is there a Kickstarter for companies that are public and allow the average person to "invest" in them?
Yes, Scottrade & E-trade & stock brokers are basically the kickstarters of public companies. Those companies are all public and registered and you can go and see how they've been doing historically and invest however much you want in them.