Generally you double an engineer&#x27;s salary to arrive at the total cost to the firm of retaining their services. So that&#x27;s 5 engineers for a year. This article puts a final estimate at 2.7x:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mit.edu&#x2F;e-club&#x2F;hadzima&#x2F;how-much-does-an-employee-cost.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.mit.edu&#x2F;e-club&#x2F;hadzima&#x2F;how-much-does-an-employee-...</a><p>You also need to realize just how new and unproven Lean Startup ideas are in the larger context of business. In that world, a million is just getting started. Most software products in the world took much much more than a million dollars to make. You have to pay the project managers, creative team, etc etc.