I think capital structure is an important consideration in the determination of whether or not a large number of investors is "good" or "bad".
Under traditional methods of capitalization you don't want a large number of investors because each investor is another person that you need to clear important business decisions with (for example if you wanted to raise another round of funding). In this system you can almost view an investor as a partner in your venture.
However there is no need to carry this over to the crowdfunding domain. It can be quite easy to reserve a class of shares with the typical rights that traditional investors would require while creating a new class of shares (with much more limited shareholders' rights) to be distributed to crowdfunding investors.
I wanted to point out that depending on how rulemaking goes in the SEC this is not necessarily true: the SEC is considering allowing all crowdfunding investors (people who have invested under the crowdfunding exemption in the JOBS act) to be bundled together into a single entity, thus easing the transition from crowdfunding to a Regulation D deal and possibly eliminating the need for a company to incorporate as a C corporation.
In addition full SEC filings are not required under the new crowdfunding exemption.
Under traditional methods of capitalization you don't want a large number of investors because each investor is another person that you need to clear important business decisions with (for example if you wanted to raise another round of funding). In this system you can almost view an investor as a partner in your venture.
However there is no need to carry this over to the crowdfunding domain. It can be quite easy to reserve a class of shares with the typical rights that traditional investors would require while creating a new class of shares (with much more limited shareholders' rights) to be distributed to crowdfunding investors.