Yes, there is less capital needed to start a business, the danger is that many copy cats will spoil the available for everyone, as happened in the last bubble, requiring a type of last man standing strategy that will require quite a bit of capital. So in the short-term, starting a startup takes less capital but creating a startup that succeeds will require a lot more capital over the long term, to outlast competitors, and execute on acquisitions/rollup.

Also, I’m haunted by a remark a friend said to me, “since when are apps startups?” Expecting engineers to become business executives seems to be a tough strategy to execute - which is why incubators try to help the engineers with learning how to manage a business. Surely it would be better to keep engineers as developers, or commission the apps, and have a professional business-building team of marketers and operations people. Yet many startups without tech leads can’t find funding even though it would seem a more prudent strategy to keep engineers engineering rather than expecting them to learn how to run and grow a business. Surely that’s a less risky business and therefore deserving an investment over one that’s lead by engineers.