Technology Risk In 1995, it cost about $15 million to build a software startup based in Silicon Valley. That money mostly went to build server stacks, purchase software and hire staff to configure and manage all that technology, as well as to write new code. By 2005, the cost had dropped to about $4 million. Servers were cheaper, and software, now often open sourced, was easier to develop and configure. Most hard costs were focused on marketing and sales.
