Do startups really cost as much as we act like they do? I mean, yeah, if you've got 10, or 30 or however many engineers, it's gonna be expensive, but there are a lot of projects that can be bootstrapped and really don't take many people. Instagram can be built by a single person working nights. You probably aren't going to get a unicorn out of that, and you'll obviously have to scale up, but it's cheaper than it has ever been. Tech is almost free these days.
The disconnect between how cheap/easy new tech is these days and how few interesting experiments we've seen in the last decade, especially in the web space, suggests that it's something other than the money. We're just not really building things because VCs and startup mantras have convinced us we need a million dollars to do anything and it's just not he case.
Do bootstrappers have an advantage in an environment like this? They've always had to tighten their belts, so they should have some advantage relative to these bigger ventures that have bills/investments to pay for.
To respond more directly to you, your conjecture should be pretty easy to test, look at metrics like the stock market plotted against when successful companies are founded. The data are there.
To provide an example, I'm bootstrapping. I haven't made more than 40k a year last decade, got student loans, about to get out of school, don't have a job, got limited funds to fall back on. This economic crunch isn't any worse for me than the past 10 years, so if the idea is it can't be done, thus far I'm doing it. Odds are I won't succeed, but it's doable. If I was making 100k and had connections, it may be easier, but I also wouldn't have the time available. Cheap machines, free OSes, and a decade of HN and other free resources don't cost much. Everyone's sitting at home, anyway. Not much better to do, not much to lose.
The disconnect between how cheap/easy new tech is these days and how few interesting experiments we've seen in the last decade, especially in the web space, suggests that it's something other than the money. We're just not really building things because VCs and startup mantras have convinced us we need a million dollars to do anything and it's just not he case.
Do bootstrappers have an advantage in an environment like this? They've always had to tighten their belts, so they should have some advantage relative to these bigger ventures that have bills/investments to pay for.
To respond more directly to you, your conjecture should be pretty easy to test, look at metrics like the stock market plotted against when successful companies are founded. The data are there.
To provide an example, I'm bootstrapping. I haven't made more than 40k a year last decade, got student loans, about to get out of school, don't have a job, got limited funds to fall back on. This economic crunch isn't any worse for me than the past 10 years, so if the idea is it can't be done, thus far I'm doing it. Odds are I won't succeed, but it's doable. If I was making 100k and had connections, it may be easier, but I also wouldn't have the time available. Cheap machines, free OSes, and a decade of HN and other free resources don't cost much. Everyone's sitting at home, anyway. Not much better to do, not much to lose.