Sounds a bit like a question you'd get out of a time capsule buried in 1998. But I guess you might have such a kick-ass idea that you have investors queueing u

Sounds a bit like a question you'd get out of a time capsule buried in 1998. But I guess you might have such a kick-ass idea that you have investors queueing up to fund it, or you might be rich and willing to fund yourself, and just want to budget. Figure 200k/person for the first year including equipment, overhead of hiring, etc. You'll need to allocate at least 20% of your company's equity for stock options. Server space is cheap and competent engineers will set you up with something on a "pay as you need it" basis. That said add $2000/month for kicks and giggles. Legal is a black box. Are you doing a new kind of game? Around 50k for trademarks, etc. Going after the music companies? One trillion dollars. Office: where are you? San Francisco? $1500-2k/month. Kansas City? They'll pay you to take the space if you throw in a little dance routine on Friday afternoons. Travel - Are you sending your sales guy to Europe twice a month? Having board meetings in Aruba? I guess you can do a Kayak search as well as we can. So if you're going to hire everyone and start building toward the Big Release, which is not recommended by the way, figure 1.5 million for the first year. If you read Steve Blank and Eric Reis' stuff you could probably do it on $200k with higher odds of success, but you'd miss out on hiring a bizdev/marketing guy, shopping for dental plans, etc.