HN user
tx: "The primary expense has always been the cost of talent and "cost of sales". Employees time and marketing/advertising." The point I am making: it is not so any more! How much dev time or marketing or technology insight went into any of these, for example: digg fbook myspace flickr techcrunch? And yet they´re worth billions of $.
I launched a start-up two months ago, and I can't agree more with Paul: it has become ridiculously inexpensive to do so. I considered chasing some VC funding, but then realized that all I need is a good idea and some time to focus on it; the VC's wouldn't have helped me with either one. As a matter of fact, even owning your own computing resources is unnecessary: check-out Amazon's cloud computing web services (our bill: <$100 / mth)!