I think this makes perfect sense, crowdfunding has many downsides but I do think that you should be payed before you build your product. By that I just mean, find potential clients in similar industries and ask what they want built to simplify their jobs and if they would pay for such a service to eliminate some pain in their line of work. It's a form of idea extraction that takes a short amount of time and actually gives your idea some validation as well as clients once you launch your idea.