&gt; Are you telling me that to &quot;make a marketable product&quot; you would need to pay 10 engineers $100k for a year?<p>Engineering, product design, graphic design (these are not the same), marketing, and sales are all needed in various proportions, depending on the product, to make a &quot;marketable product.&quot; Between all of those roles you could easily chew up $1million in 1 year when you account for e.g. ~2x salary:total cost of employee ratio and standard Silicon Valley compensation levels.