That depends on what you mean by "require" - one successful startup strategy is to make something that _functions_ for a small user base, but operates at a loss until it hits some critical size. Like, in the early days at Square, we lost money on literally every transaction, but as the number of transactions increased it was possible to negotiate a bulk processing rate, (and then much, much later scale the number of transactions high enough to pay for the engineering department). But the customers saw value immediately, and the trajectory was convincing enough for investors to provide the bridge.