&gt; OK, we need to qualify what is meant by &#x27;product&#x27;. I&#x27;m not talking about a palette swapped iteration on an existing product. I&#x27;m talking about something new that the market hasn&#x27;t yet quite seen before. The sort of product Silicon Valley funds.<p>Something never seen before like Snapchat? Or something never seen before like Hyperloop? If its the latter then clearly you&#x27;re correct in your assessment but most startups ambitions fall much closer to the former.<p>Your post here has got some valid points but you&#x27;ve moved away from the very specific &quot;minimum $1m for a marketable product&quot; to some very vague generalities.<p>&gt; Even the palette-swaps generally cost anywhere from a quarter to half a million dollars to do properly<p>&quot;Properly&quot; is subjective. I could have a Snapchat clone developed <i>easily</i> for $100k - probably considerably less - lets just say iOS App and corresponding web app &amp; server architecture. With the exception that it clearly wouldn&#x27;t be able to handle the load Snapchat handles - but certainly enough to be marketable.<p>&gt; which is really why it seems to you that a million bucks is an outlandishly huge number.<p>I never said a million dollars is a large number. I know how easy it is to blow through such an amount.<p>My argument was you don&#x27;t need that amount to create a marketable product - whether you&#x27;re a developer or not.<p>Perhaps In SV, you may be correct but most people do not live in SV.<p>The reason I feel so strongly about this is that your sentiment is a very dangerous one to propagate to new or would-be startup founders. Based on the number of downvotes I&#x27;ve received for disagreeing with your comment, it would seem that people believe you need $1m in the bank before you can go to market.<p>That&#x27;s a very good way of making sure some entrepreneurs never bother trying.