It does scale down - remember, it's not just the initial capital, but also 10 years of work. There are many similar situations where you can get similar returns. My parents spent ~$1000 on programming/CS textbooks for me when I was a teenager, and it made me a whole lot more than $30,500 in additional wages. Pick the right technology platform today and you can spend a couple hundred bucks and end up with a few billion.