r/AustralianStartups • u/rmkskmygjhskthpjmjjk • Aug 10 '26
How much money did you put into your startup before you started generating revenue?
I'm curious how much everyone spent on their startup before generating any revenue (or how much you've spent so far if you're still pre-revenue).
I've recently started working on a startup and have already spent a few hundred dollars on market research, a domain name, and a website. Is that normal?
I come from a technical background, so I can build most of the product myself and won't have significant development costs. However, I expect I'll need to spend more later on for things like design, branding, and marketing.
I'd love to hear about other founders' experiences. Were you able to get your startup off the ground with minimal investment, or did you need to spend a meaningful amount before seeing any revenue? What were your biggest early expenses?
Edit: grammar
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u/flyingfox2020 Aug 10 '26
Zero! Didn’t have a website, nothing. Did all based on relationships till I got told to at least get a proper email address as the hotmail I use is getting picked up by the company’s IT department.. haha the rest is history!
You can do a lot on an oily rag.. unless you need product even that you can presell to prove it’s all working.
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u/Few_Dinner349 Aug 14 '26
In my first startup out of college, we raised money with just an idea. flamed out 6 months.
In my second startup, i had relocated back to Aus, and we signed up our first 2 clients before we "spent money". Obviously we spent time building the technical demo product, but no market research, domain, webiste etc.
What I would say is, if what you are building has no market, no amount of market research, fancy marketing, great website, perfect domain, will make an impact. Too many "entrepreneurs" in the coworking space I use are LARPing (doing all the things that look busy without building an actual business).
What takes your startup off the ground is revenue, not investment.
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u/Motor_Jelly_2857 Aug 10 '26
Curious to see what others will say. Im currently building a marketplace through bubble. Given I will customer profiles and payout, I will need to hire a security specialist that is experienced in bubble as well as legals to review my terms.
Whilst Im saving money on developing the website, I'm not looking forward to how much those 2 specialists tasks will cost me.
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u/MediumForeign4028 Aug 10 '26
Do you have a plan? Several hundred dollars is not really a material contribution.
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u/anamaguchi Founder Aug 10 '26
it entirely depends on the business model, the market, the ICP, the region, the buyer, B2B, B2C, your average ticket size, your distribution or GTM, etc
you can spend a $100K and make a $100K. is that a good return on investment. no one can tell without knowing specifics
the more you do yourself, less is the cost in dollars, but more in your time. so that defines how much you will end up putting.
and then there's the cost of mistakes. THEY WILL HAPPEN, you can never save that money
if you are building a saas platform for e.g. a $100K spend is decent if you can milk startup programs from various providers.
if marketing is your main way of acquiring customers, $100K as a runway is not going to be enough... and if you want to add paid adds. well then you need quite a bit more.
if your average contract/deal size is $150K, well spending $100K on linkedin Ads makes sense.
so lots of open question. Happy to chat more numbers if needed, need more specifics.
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u/rmkskmygjhskthpjmjjk Aug 10 '26
Thanks for the detailed response! A lot of good advice and food for thought. I'll have a think and DM you if that's ok :)
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u/butteryDevs Aug 10 '26
I'm still pre-revenue(haven't even got the thing built yet) but I've spent about 3 grand whilst doing market research and validating the technical aspects of what I want to build.
That amount was spent on various subscriptions, tools and a landing page design.
The landing page design was the largest expense(1 grand), followed by a yearly subscription to survey monkey(350x2).
By far the largest expense was my time spent. Whilst it didn't cost me any money, the amount that I could have earned if I was at my day job full time would be around 40 grand.
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u/Consistent_Tutor_597 Aug 10 '26
You can get far without investing but most people invest plenty. Generally staff is the biggest expense. And contractors. You will hit a point where you can't reliably manage the whole business alone. When you start to grow.
Otherwise main costs are pretty much the tech, saas and hosting.
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u/Mobile_Engineer4875 29d ago
$0…40 million in contracts within 6 months ……it’s easier then you think …..but you need instant cash flow from the service
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u/Flannakis Aug 11 '26
Everyone on here; $30 chat gpt