HAPILABS said it has begun a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the manufacture and distribution of its HAPIfork. The electronic fork, that vibrates when a user eats too quickly, was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and is still in prototype. The $100,000 Kickstarter campaign will allow up to 2,500 people to obtain the fork for $89 and offer it at $99 for everyone else.

Much has been written about how popular crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter are merely scratching the surface of a big funding vacuum – and taking on venture capitalists in the process. But Kickstarter may ultimately evolve into more than a replacement to VC or even a lead-in to it. Today, in fact, it becomes a direct retail outlet for a fully baked product.

You don’t often hear venture capitalists talking about the world’s biggest crowd-funding site, Kickstarter. But maybe they should.

Since the beginning of May, at least two new investment-oriented crowdfunding initiatives have been announced — a partnership between EarlyShares.com and Navocate, and one by the U.S. Crowdfunding Exchange LLC, Reuters reports.