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
My initial thought is that people can go so much further than they expect with little to no money - especially when it comes to setting up validation exercises. In an ideal world, you shouldn't have to spend more than a thousand bucks before finding out if it is worth putting more money into your idea.
You should put money into your idea in stages and if you first start by ensuring the idea is worth it, this can save a lot of money and headache.
Thanks for the good question!
It amazes me how much you can achieve today, even without big VC money. We've been bootstrapping out of Madrid, Spain (which is obviously easier to do than living in high cost of living cities) and have benefits from NVIDIA Inception Program. Agree with comments that building is just step one and the true test is distribution.
Onpilot
The build cost is basically zero now if you're scrappy about it. The real budget question is how long you can stay alive while getting distribution to work — that's where people underestimate badly. You can ship for $100 but the 6 months of grinding to get your first 500 real users isn't free, even if no money changes hands.
Just lived this, so real numbers. I shipped a paid web tool this spring as a solo side project: domain about $12 a year, hosting $0 (static site on GitHub Pages), payments $0 fixed (a merchant-of-record provider takes a cut per sale), analytics about $9 a month, and an AI assistant subscription around $20 a month that did most of the heavy lifting on code, design, and copy. Roughly $50 to be live and selling, about $30 a month to stay there.
But your last paragraph is the actual answer. Building stopped being the expensive part. The cost that hit me wasn't tools, it was discovering that "live" and "discovered" are two different products. Organic channels take months to compound, and the faster route is borrowing audiences that already exist, which costs time and persistence rather than money. So my honest minimum: around $100 in tools, plus several times more hours on distribution than you spent building, and the discipline to start the distribution work before the product is finished. The money is the easy part now.
six months of rent and one good engineering laptop. that is the floor. everything past that is comfort, not necessity. the founders who overcapitalize early pay for the comfort with their decision speed.
Building Ritually right now and my total spend so far is under $50 domain, Anthropic API credits, and Formspree for the waitlist form. FlutterFlow free tier for the app, Vercel free tier for hosting, Carrd free tier for the landing page.
The real cost isn't money it's time. And that's what makes building a startup genuinely accessible to solo founders today.
The cost of building a product has fallen dramatically, but I’m not sure the cost of building a company has fallen by the same amount. Distribution, trust, customer support, hiring, legal work, and retention can quickly become more expensive than the MVP itself. However, I would say fundraising at VC does help a lot. Based on my friend who currently works at 1752vc, they invest up to $3.5M.