Take this with a grain of salt, as I've never done anything frighteningly ambitious. One point of advice from the PG article is "Empirically, the way to do rea

Take this with a grain of salt, as I've never done anything frighteningly ambitious. One point of advice from the PG article is "Empirically, the way to do really big things seems to be to start with deceptively small things." And another article http://paulgraham.com/pinch.html http://paulgraham.com/pinch.html which may apply here is that consulting can help generate money temporarily. So maybe you can get a couple of clients you do consulting for that is enough to cover the cost of equipment. Maybe that consulting directly involves using said equipment, and you can rent it temporarily until you have a critical mass of clients which enables you to buy it. Once you're ready to be profitable with your ultimate vision, wind down the consulting business. edit: Also HN does invest in businesses that are outside of your typical web 2.0 thingy (they have a nuclear power startup). And the goal of demo day is to get you seed funding that might meet your requirements.