But that is one in the same ... it's really a turn-off for investors when you're asking money from them and then immediately diluting their shares with the premine.
I don't see why so many people think of it that way. When you're getting VC funding for a startup, it's common practice to hand out something like 10-20% in the first round. Nobody ever thinks of that as some kind of evil plot where you sell the company and then pull the rug out from under the hapless venture capitalists and dilute them 80-90%; people think of it as, well, you creating X shares and only handling out 0.1X-0.2X to the VCs. It's the same here; we're taking preorders for 67% of the initial issuance instead of 100% of the initial issuance.
What a naive thing to say. Do you think VC's are spending their own money when investing? They have zero risk when investing other than a diminished return.. We are talking about spending our hard earned cash on this project, not spending other people's money. Don't compare the community here to VC investing, such bullshit.