How much money do you think is enough to start and launch a startup?
A lot of people try to raise funding before they even begin.
And then sometimes I read those “zero to hero” stories. (Maybe they’re a bit "polished" by the media to have publicity.)
In any case, building products has become much easier from a technical perspective, which also makes it cheaper – especially for software startups.
In many cases, all you really need is ChatGPT or another AI model ($20), a domain (starting around $10), some DNS or hosting services (sometimes from $50), and your own time.
The basic costs can realistically stay around $100.
But the fact that the building is more accessible also creates overcrowding, which means you then have to invest much more time and money into marketing.
What would you estimate is the minimum budget needed to start a startup?
(Of course, it varies. In some cases, you also need to deal with bureaucracy from day one – company registration fees, social and health insurance contributions, and other administrative costs. This is valid especially for EU countries.)
Replies
Happycapy
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@bartvandekooij Is it your case too?
The barrier to building a startup is probably the lowest it has ever been.
The barrier to getting attention is the highest.
You can realistically build an MVP for under $500 today with AI tools, no-code stacks, and cloud credits. But distribution is where most startups underestimate costs, whether that’s content, SEO, community building, ads, or partnerships.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@devika_thakur_chandel Despite that, not many people will do that. They need strong will :)
One angle I don’t see discussed enough, AI has reduced the cost of building dramatically, but increased the cost of conviction. When everyone can ship quickly, the real advantage becomes taste, positioning, distribution, and knowing what’s actually worth building in the first place.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@surabhi_minocha Okay, but it also costs some money (unless you are pretty creative) :D
@busmark_w_nika Fair point 😄
The startup budget spreadsheet never seems to include the cost of changing your mind 17 times before lunch.
We all know of THAT guy who started in the garage or a girl who just had a crappy computer and made millions of dollars but I would rather say that it depends how much work the team is willing to do without pay. In Sweden the main thing that drives costs is work labor. THAT guy och girl in the sunshine story, just did all the work hours needed to make them successful.
But even if most things today is pretty affordable, as @byalexai mentions it's of course the fastest way to a big shunk of money is to spend money. If you have $2M, the goal av $100M, would be easier to reach.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@byalexai @kim_lindberg_adable yeah, but if you do not have money, your compensation then needs to be skills earned by huge amount of time.
I’d split “start” into two budgets: proof budget and learning budget.
The proof budget can be tiny now — domain, hosting, AI tools, maybe a few paid APIs. But the learning budget is the part founders underestimate: enough runway to talk to users, rewrite positioning, try bad channels, fix onboarding, and survive the first version being wrong.
For a small software product I’d rather see someone start with $100 and 3 months of honest discovery time than $10k spent making the first idea look polished before anyone cares.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jim_jeffers I haven't been thinking about using the budget like this. Interesting POV :)
I think it's expensive. It takes a lot of creativity, determination, a little bit of ingenuity, did I say creativity!!, a lot of willingness to get back up and try again. Ability to communicate value that your product offers makes things a lot more possible. Anything else, is extra.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@dstr88 but if you do not have money, you need to earn all of them with your time.
@busmark_w_nika True, the starting point or business model may look different based on what you have. Are you familiar with Col. Sanders story -founder of KFC. -BTW, this is not an endorsement for KFC. Just his business model. He used his creativity and sold a recipe.
$0 if you send a compelling enough email to these companies you'll 100% get credits.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@chloesamaha Do you have that personal experience?
I slightly disagree with the “you can build any startup for $500 now” narrative.
You can absolutely build some products cheaply today. But not every product is a simple wrapper around an API anymore.
Building a good looking product with a few API’s is easy but making it work or fixing bugs or turning it into an actual business is the difficult part.
The more technically ambitious the product gets, the faster costs compound:
GPU compute, infra, proprietary pipelines, data, rendering, latency optimization, testing, security, enterprise readiness, etc.
We’re building REPLACI, and even before scaling, we spent significantly more than a few hundred dollars just getting the core experience production-ready.
AI reduced the cost of starting.
It definitely did not reduce the cost of building something people genuinely can’t replace.
Also — distribution is now far more expensive than development itself.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sarthaksethi, it's probably highly individual and depends on many factors.
My!hū
As much as you can afford to put into the product, I believe. The problem these days is not in building the actual product; it's marketing and advertising. AI tools have considerably reduced the starting costs for software products, but marketing remains very expensive and time-consuming.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@loveypale But with so many ads, how can people and their products differentiate? This cannot be a case of endless battles in spending money on marketing.
The overcrowding point is so real. Anyone can build something now, but standing out in a flooded market? That's the actual challenge.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@sastra_kasra Marketing – requires – money – too ;)