I know. I've set up websites before; I am aware that it doesn't take that much money to get it running.

But what about advertising? Branding? Anything that a $5 droplet can do, someone else's product can probably do too -- you don't have the tech advantage. Do you stand out with UX? By doing the legwork yourself? All of these take manpower, and that means capital.

It's not the website that costs money to make; it's making that website profitable.

Yeah, if you don’t have any resources, you do everything yourself. Paid advertising can be useful for scaling, but you don’t need it for getting the first few users, and usually you’re shooting for being good enough to get word of mouth spread.

I think you may have a few competitive advantages that a 16 year old may lack, like a quiet place to work, an internet connection, a network of people, etc. etc. You’ve got such an advantage that it’s utterly pointless to draw comparisons.

The idea that someone somewhere can probably maybe might be able to make this work does not make the case that people have opportunity.

We were talking about needing startup capital to get the business off the ground, so this is kind of moving the goalposts.

But if you have a library nearby, that can take care of a lot of the concerns you’re talking about. Before the pandemic, I frequently worked out of one. Your hypothetical 16 year old likely has a suitable spot at their school.

You really don’t need an existing network to get a business started. You can find initial users on Internet forums, or reach out to people on LinkedIn.

If that’s true, why is it so rare? Why is this secret undiscovered?

What is “it” referring to? Bootstrapping a small business?

There are quite a lot of successful small saas startups that took no funding. Are you familiar with microconf? The business of software conference?

It might seem rare if you don’t know anybody doing it, the knowledge isn’t evenly distributed. Doesn’t mean it is rare.

It's not rare at all.