No, I don’t think it appropriate to flame Will, nor to belittle him nor his project.   (Save your down-votes for me:   I collect them.)

Kickstarter campaigns do not have many features that would be used in “ordinary” venture capitalization.   Committing money with this model is a “one-phase commit.”   Worst case, the investor’s money is gone.   There is no concept of, say, a line-of-credit, nor a trust fund / escrow account from which money can be periodically disbursed.   Kickstarter simply provides cash.   Therefore, KS gets a lot of press coverage ... the image of “easy money” always does that ... but really, it’s not a prudent way to do it.   Not for the investors, and, not for the project or its leadership.

I would say:

• Publish a detailed project plan and timeline.   From this, you can take-off the predicted expectations of time, money, and especially manpower.   You know it will take more of all these things, than you think.   All three are available, if you do it right.
• Describe your technical strategy in detail, including underlying technologies (LLVM?) that you are using.
• Immediately open up the project to the technical participation of others, as reviewers and as participants.   Indeed, you know a great deal about compiler construction, but so do many other people who can help you.
• Publish a C.V. about yourself as the project leader.
• As the number of people in the project, the amount of detailed knowledge about the project, and the sense of community-ownership grows, so will investor confidence in the project.
• Take immediate steps to curtail the feelings expressed in the previous post:   feelings of alienation from a project of mutual interest to the Perl community.
• Once you have the money to proceed another month (and, you do), proceed.   Blog about it, post commits to a public repository, accept bug-tracker tickets, and so on.

This is a worthy project, and we want to see it succeed.   But the community should be asked to help in more ways than money.   For the good of the project, and of Perl.

Press on ... and, open the door.