Ask HN: Is it possible to scale a startup from literally absolute zero?

It has always made me curious reading about founder posts scaling to 100s of Ks in MRR over a period of fewer than 2 years.

I run a Graphic Design + Web Development agency on subscriptions (http://draftss.com). We are soon going to complete 1 year of inception and the highest we were able to reach in a particular month was $8k MRR. I co-founded Draftss after quitting a full-time job in an altogether different domain and hence no relevant network of possible users.

It makes me wonder that; is it the case where you need to burn investment via Ads and then optimize the ad spends for returns?

Is there a secret community of buyers that is hidden away from new founders?

Do you require a huge following on social networks?

What exactly am I missing?