[bikamonki]

It depends entirely on the SAAS. A non-programmer friend of mine paid peanuts to an off-shore programmer to build an über simple slack-clone with Firebase + Angular + Phonegap. He has two paying customers so far. Will this scale? Probably not but if he reaches 20 customers he'll have the money for the rockstars.

This friend is a sales ninja, the tech is not an obstacle for him.

[ilaksh]

First of all, a Slack clone with Firebase/Angular/Phonegap is not simple in terms of the engineering effort. If he found someone to implement a working system like that for peanuts, then he did not bootstap his startup alone, he did it by taking advantage of the other guy, and the fact that he does not acknowledge the other guy did 90% percent of it and describes it as a 'solo' effort just means that he is an asshole.

[antisthenes]

Are you willing to pay for my education to become a software engineer, so I can code my own products?

If not, then you're the asshole.