I think there’s an underrated way to look at startups, tech and gaming:
Capital efficiency isn’t necessarily about how money was spent.
It’s about the relationship between resources available and what was delivered.
People often underestimate what software costs to build, especially before AI made certain parts of development faster and cheaper.
What seems like a lot of money to a private individual can be surprisingly little when you’re building software.
Take two companies working in the same broad category:
One had access to $ 100M.
Another had access to $ 5M.
Don’t speculate on how they used it.
Just look at the output.
What was actually built?
What shipped?
What technology exists?
What products are operational?
What has continued to develop over time?
What did their marketing achieve?
Then compare that with the resources other teams building SIMILAR products had available.
The difference can be enormous.
This isn’t about saying the smaller-funded company is automatically better.
Some problems/projects genuinely require more capital. Teams, engineering, infrastructure, design, security, legal work, marketing and ongoing maintenance all add up quickly.
But output relative to available resources is an interesting signal of execution and ambition.
This is particularly worth examining in gaming, AI, hardware and immersive technology, where development can be extremely capital intensive.
Sometimes the most impressive companies aren’t the ones with the biggest war chests.
They’re the ones where you look at what exists today and think:
“They built all of that with that little?”
That’s a comparison worth making more often...