TL;DR: We surveyed 50 founders to find that the average bootstrapped MVP costs just $2,800 to launch. While tech infrastructure is cheaper than ever, legal fees remain a significant fixed cost. The data shows successful founders prioritize organic community engagement over paid ads to keep their burn rate low.
The Founder's Expense Cheat Sheet
For those in a hurry, here is how the costs break down between a traditional build and an AI-augmented approach.
| Expense Category | Traditional Approach (Est.) | AI-Augmented Approach (Est.) | The Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Development | $5,000+ (Contractors/Agencies) | $300 (Cursor/Replit + APIs) | AI coding assistants replace junior dev hours. |
| Design | $1,500 (Freelance Designer) | $50 (Midjourney/Canva Pro) | AI tools handle assets; you handle the layout. |
| Content/Marketing | $2,000 (Copywriters/SEO) | $200 (ChatGPT/Claude/Writer) | AI drafts the volume; you refine the voice. |
| Legal/Admin | $900 | $900 | No change. Gov fees don’t care about AI. |
| Hosting/Infra | $100 | $500 | AI API costs scale with users. |
| Total MVP Cost | ~$9,500 | ~$1,950 | ~80% savings |
The narrative of the million-dollar seed round dominates the headlines and makes it easy to believe that starting a software company requires deep pockets. However, the reality for the indie hacker community is significantly different.
We surveyed 50 founders within the 'We Are Founders' network to uncover the truth about startup costs and where money goes during the first six months.
The data shows that ingenuity often outpaces capital for early-stage companies. You can launch a viable product for less than the cost of a used car if you know where to look.
The AI Deflationary Effect
The biggest shift in our 2026 data compared to previous years is the impact of AI on labor costs. Tools like Cursor, v0, and Replit have effectively collapsed the cost of writing code for technical founders.
Founders who used AI coding assistants reported shipping their MVPs around 40% faster than those who did not. This speed translates directly to savings, as time is the most expensive resource in a bootstrap runway.
However, this comes with a new line item: API costs. While you save on developers, you now pay "rent" to intelligence providers like OpenAI or Anthropic. For most MVPs, this trade-off is overwhelmingly positive, often costing less than $50 a month until you hit scale.
The Tech Stack Reality
The cost of hosting and building software has plummeted, turning what used to be a significant line item into a negligible expense.
Our survey indicates that 65% of founders spent less than $50 per month on their tech stack during the MVP phase. This is largely due to generous free tiers from providers like Vercel, Supabase, and AWS.
Founders are leveraging these free tiers to validate their ideas before committing to paid plans. The primary cost in this category actually comes from no-code tools. While no-code accelerates development, platforms like Bubble or Webflow often require paid subscriptions to connect a custom domain.
The Legal and Admin Hurdle
This is the category that catches most founders off guard because while you can build a product for free, you cannot legally register a business for free. Incorporation fees, registered agent services, and banking setups average around $500 to $900 depending on the location.
Services like Stripe Atlas have streamlined this process, but it remains a fixed cost that cannot be engineered away. Many founders in our survey admitted they initially tried to delay this step but eventually realized that separating personal and business liability was worth the upfront cash.
The Marketing Black Hole
This is where the budget variance is widest, as some founders spent $0 on marketing by relying on organic reach while others poured thousands into ads. The data suggests a strong correlation between low marketing spend and high founder engagement.
Founders who spent time building in public and engaging with communities spent 80% less on paid acquisition because they traded time for money. Those who tried to automate their growth with ads early on often found their customer acquisition cost was unsustainable.
Validating your idea through conversations is free, but buying traffic to an unvalidated idea is expensive.
Where Founders Wasted Money
We asked our respondents to name their biggest regret purchase, and the most common answer was purchasing expensive domains. 20% of founders surveyed spent over $2,000 on a premium .com domain before they had a single customer.
In many cases, they pivoted the business idea three months later, rendering the domain worthless. It is better to start with a cheap domain and upgrade later when revenue justifies the expense.
Another common waste was premature optimization, such as paying for advanced analytics tools. Founders often purchased premium email marketing software before having a substantial user base to justify the cost.
The barrier to entry for starting a SaaS business has never been lower, but the barrier to success remains high. Money helps, but discipline regarding where those dollars go matters significantly more.
The founders who succeeded did not have the biggest budgets, but they did have the tightest focus. Focus on your product and your customers, and let the revenue pay for the fancy tools later.
