--Ten years ago, such a venture would have cost roughly $5 million to $10 million just to get the technology, such as servers and a fleet of software developers, before an entrepreneur could get an Internet company off the ground.<p>Typical mass media ignorance. PG said somewhere that Viaweb spent about $2m in its entire existance. All that's changed is that the tools have improved and dedicated web hosting with decent bandwidth costs are in the hundreds instead of the thousands of dollars. It's always been possible to start a web business off a credit card or a digging into a modest nest egg - the only difference is, back then, most people saw little reason to when someone would gladly give them $5-10 million bucks (which needed to be spent) to get the site off the ground.<p>Of course, this isn't new to anyone reading this, so please excuse my audienceless rant. :)