You're also ignoring the probability of success. This project is only worth $shitton ($30 million) if the project were perfectly executed and other market participants didn't dynamically react to this new entrant. This isn't the likely outcome.
The expected value of this project is probably only $5-10 million once you factor probability of success into account and thus not worth the time and effort at trying in the first place. A $5-10 million E.V. project is very much worthwhile for two founders who wanted to bootstrap though!
One reason VCs target billion dollar ideas is that you'll probably fail. But in the unlikely scenario that you succeed, it more than makes up for the 10-20 other projects in their portfolio that DID fail.
You won't even make 1 penny, if you can't break even on your user acquisition costs. That's what usually breaks a business not the fact that it's not profitable enough, but that's it not profitable at all.
The lessons are an ongoing expense, but the principals will rather quickly eliminate the middle man marketplace after meeting and being happy with the connection.
That said, if you want to specialize in $shitton projects you should be picking ones that don't need to be perfectly executed. There's a literal shitton of $shitton projects out there that you can half ass and still make a $shitton from. In my experience the best method at finding these $shitton projects is throwing shit on a wall and seeing what sticks.
The expected value of this project is probably only $5-10 million once you factor probability of success into account and thus not worth the time and effort at trying in the first place. A $5-10 million E.V. project is very much worthwhile for two founders who wanted to bootstrap though!
One reason VCs target billion dollar ideas is that you'll probably fail. But in the unlikely scenario that you succeed, it more than makes up for the 10-20 other projects in their portfolio that DID fail.