IMO Crowdsourcing would work better for buying bulk prefab ASIC chips (from Avalon, maybe helv in the future) and working from there; less risk if knowledgeable/experienced parties are involved. Vetting processes and possible recourse laid out in contracts etc...
August 9, 2012, forum user Friedcat describes investment opportunity for ASICMINER, which was to produce the chips to be mined by related organization MOORE mining. $100K USD funds raised via GLBSE (equity crowdfunding), a record for a GLBSE raise, I believe, up until that time.
ASICMINER: Entering the Future of ASIC Mining by Inventing It -
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.0February 14th, 2013, ASICMINER running 2.0 Thash/s against BTC GUILD, with much more to com:
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http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg1527549#msg1527549The first couple of weekly dividends on those ASICMINER shares were returning dividends of well over a third of the initial investment (in terms of BTCs dividend versus BTCs issued at).