In the context of finance and banking, $20 million is not at all a large number. Even in tech, companies don't have trouble raising sums much larger than this f

In the context of finance and banking, $20 million is not at all a large number. Even in tech, companies don't have trouble raising sums much larger than this for even relatively unambitious goals. The money is there for teams tackling big financial problems: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-09/stripe-said-to-get-funding-valuing-online-payment-startup-at-100-million.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-09/stripe-said-to-get-.... If you need $20mm to start, you're not likely to bootstrap your way into building a nationwide payment network that you run on rented VPS, but I'd argue that might not be such a bad thing.