As someone working on smaller things in his freetime as side projects, I have been wondering about this a lot.

Is the process

• Have idea, validate it with market research, found startup, get venture capital, make money

or

• Have idea, validate it with market research, release small official product (MVP status), continue working on it until it makes some solid income, THEN found a startup to bring it to the next level

​

Because obviously with some capital up front you could get to the goal much faster, but I suppose nobody cares about you to give you money, until you've already had some success.