For technical folks bootstrapping say a iphone or fb app is very little money and 25-150k could be used for market validation - another very important part of the startup cycle. If the entrepreneur is say a business person who can't code anymore then a prototype cost will be roughly 25k or so just to get an initial build this still isn't enough to launch. So getting a customer immediately is very important and working capital to service and grow.

There are only two ways to get money for a startup: 1) top line revenue from a product or service or 2) sell equity or do a debt note. That's it.

I've estimated that the required amount for a "real" seed round in today's open source environment for tech ventures is about 200-300k. That is unless you are young and can do the coding yourself. However technology isn't the driver any more for startups. The scarce talent is business model engineering and product marketing - building for scale isn't the problem anymore. I can build a hack protytype that works well into the "validation" stage to establish a funding event or customer revenue stream then use the new capital to rebuild, hire and grow.