[NateDad]

There's a lot more than opportunity cost. There's the actual money in my pocket lost from the (probably very good) salary that I would be making at an established company. Most people still have to pay the rent or the mortgage. That's the main barrier of entry. It's not that we think we'll have to max out all our credit cards... the cost of renting some EC2 instances pales in comparison to my mortgage, I can tell you that much.

[martinced]

"There's a lot more than opportunity cost. There's the actual money in my pocket lost from the (probably very good) salary that I would be making at an established company."

I'm probably mistaken on this but isn't your second sentence precisely the very definition of "opportunity cost"?

I mean, the opportunity cost isn't what it's going to cost you to buy ramen and rent EC2 instances: the opportunity cost is the money you're not winning should you be working for a company actually paying you.