$2mm isn't actually a huge amount to test out a potentially valuable idea without having more than a vague business model -- if successful, this would be direct

$2mm isn't actually a huge amount to test out a potentially valuable idea without having more than a vague business model -- if successful, this would be directly hard cash valuable to a lot of people, so it's not unreasonable to hand-wave "find a way to charge people later". I've heard of plenty of projects (inside larger companies) that probably cost more than that and were unceremoniously shut down when they didn't work out. 1: at $100k, it's 20 engineers for a year, and that's without office space, desks, computers or servers