> OK, we need to qualify what is meant by 'product'. I'm not talking about a palette swapped iteration on an existing product. I'm talking about something new that the market hasn't yet quite seen before. The sort of product Silicon Valley funds.
Something never seen before like Snapchat? Or something never seen before like Hyperloop? If its the latter then clearly you're correct in your assessment but most startups ambitions fall much closer to the former.
Your post here has got some valid points but you've moved away from the very specific "minimum $1m for a marketable product" to some very vague generalities.
> Even the palette-swaps generally cost anywhere from a quarter to half a million dollars to do properly
"Properly" is subjective. I could have a Snapchat clone developed easily for $100k - probably considerably less - lets just say iOS App and corresponding web app & server architecture. With the exception that it clearly wouldn't be able to handle the load Snapchat handles - but certainly enough to be marketable.
> which is really why it seems to you that a million bucks is an outlandishly huge number.
I never said a million dollars is a large number. I know how easy it is to blow through such an amount.
My argument was you don't need that amount to create a marketable product - whether you're a developer or not.
Perhaps In SV, you may be correct but most people do not live in SV.
The reason I feel so strongly about this is that your sentiment is a very dangerous one to propagate to new or would-be startup founders. Based on the number of downvotes I've received for disagreeing with your comment, it would seem that people believe you need $1m in the bank before you can go to market.
That's a very good way of making sure some entrepreneurs never bother trying.
Now you're backpedaling while accusing me of doing so.
> I could have a Snapchat clone developed easily for $100k - probably considerably less
Bearing in mind that a Snapchat clone by itself wouldn't be marketable, you'd need a lot of marketing to differentiate it, so could I. But you and I have expertise, and expertise is valuable and needs to be factored into the price. That's the point I'm trying to make. My old CEO knows nothing about software, he paid half a million for an e-commerce site. For a real software product built by someone who doesn't know what he's doing, a million dollars is the minimum. Anyone who comes to the table with less than that is going to get really badly burned.
If you come to the table with half a million worth of expertise, and zero dollars of capital, you will probably fail unless you focus hard on getting funded. I'd rate the skill of getting funded as worth around $150-200K. If you don't already have it, you're going to have to pour in more of your blood, sweat and tears.
> it would seem that people believe you need $1m in the bank before you can go to market.
No, they understand the meaning of "a million dollars of your own blood, sweat and tears".
It does absolutely no good to would-be founders if they try their hand at doing a startup thinking it's going to be easy. When I see these kinds of post-mortems, I see that clearly, a million bucks worth of effort wasn't put in. They worked too hard, and not smart enough. They didn't have the expertise to enter the market that they wanted to be in. They may not have literally thought that all of their competitors and potential partners were stupid and / or naive, but their business model implicitly assumed it. They failed to de-risk the business and the risk killed them.
Something never seen before like Snapchat? Or something never seen before like Hyperloop? If its the latter then clearly you're correct in your assessment but most startups ambitions fall much closer to the former.
Your post here has got some valid points but you've moved away from the very specific "minimum $1m for a marketable product" to some very vague generalities.
> Even the palette-swaps generally cost anywhere from a quarter to half a million dollars to do properly
"Properly" is subjective. I could have a Snapchat clone developed easily for $100k - probably considerably less - lets just say iOS App and corresponding web app & server architecture. With the exception that it clearly wouldn't be able to handle the load Snapchat handles - but certainly enough to be marketable.
> which is really why it seems to you that a million bucks is an outlandishly huge number.
I never said a million dollars is a large number. I know how easy it is to blow through such an amount.
My argument was you don't need that amount to create a marketable product - whether you're a developer or not.
Perhaps In SV, you may be correct but most people do not live in SV.
The reason I feel so strongly about this is that your sentiment is a very dangerous one to propagate to new or would-be startup founders. Based on the number of downvotes I've received for disagreeing with your comment, it would seem that people believe you need $1m in the bank before you can go to market.
That's a very good way of making sure some entrepreneurs never bother trying.