Kickstarter is a great platform for doing both. If you were trying to raise money for the development of a tangible product or invention, Quirky is a crowdfunding platform made specifically for this but I've had a successful campaign on kickstarter raising money for my invention, so that works too. Kickstarter is more known.

The biggest mistake most people make raising money through crowdfunding is that they don't give enough value in return for the amount of money they are asking for their pledge levels. That goes for a business innovation model or product innovation model. For each you need to prepare your campaign a few months ahead of time, have a great marketing plan in place, tell a great story with a great quality video, and also give backers reward levels that they can't turn down.

If you want to take your campaign seriously you should have a dozen members on board and plan to spend over $10,000 on campaign.

Treat crowdfunding as if you were running a business.

Hope this helps!

In my mind Crowdfunding is the best way to raise funds without giving up anymore equity of your company. With a proven track record of sales and already ready and willing customers, you already have a tribe to promote to. Having already achieved success milestones shows potential backers that you are reliable and have what it takes to fulfill whatever it is you are raising money for.

If you are looking to raise a few hundred thousand or even a million you should plan on spending a minimum of $25,000 on campaign and have at least 12 fulltime members on team to create, launch, and run entire campaign.

I'm about to launch campaign in November and we will have tens of thousands into campaign, have 12 committed members and over 100 Ambassadors involved and our goal is to raise $1,000,000.

Crowdfunding get's more national media attention for your company, allows you to capture another market, and gives you a platform to market off of for life.

Hope this helps!