DreamIt Ventures’ William Crowder: ‘I am terrified of crowd-funding’

William Crowder, of DreamIt Ventures and Comcast Ventures, says most ventures are not cut out for crowd-funding.

Not all ventures are created equal, says William Crowder, a managing partner at DreamIt Ventures and advisor at Comcast Ventures.

Naturally, that means that different ideas require different kinds of funding. But Crowder says he’s especially wary of crowd funding — scratch that, he’s “terrified” of the buzzy effort to mass-fundraise a startup’s next growth goal.

Crowder spoke at this year’s UNITY conference, a gathering of several minority journalist associations, as part of a track for media entrepreneurs. There was a solid Philly presence at the talk on startup funding, with Crowder and angel investor Tim Reese of Philly’s Minority Angel Investment Network on the three-person panel.

The panel covered standard topics, mainly the difference between different kinds of funding and what angel investors, VCs and foundations are looking for. But we thought Crowder’s comment was worth noting.

In response to a question about crowd-funding, Crowder cautioned against it, saying that he thought it allowed bad ideas to get funded. It leads people to invest in things they don’t actually know about, Crowder said.

Though he did say that not every idea is cut out for VC funding, he said that VC funding provides more than just money: it offers the access and mentorship for a startup to get its next round of funding — something that crowd-funding can’t do.

Still, Crowder said he’s not completely against crowd-funding.

“I’m wary of people who think they’ll get rich off it,” he says.

We’ve seen mixed results from company Kickstarters, specifically from indie game designers: while Cipher Prime hit its goal for a new game with flying colors, Seth Perkins’ canceled his crowd-funding efforts for a game called iH8Zombies.