So I ran across a 7-month-old blog post from Guy Kawasaki on how Truemors.com cost him around $12,000 to launch.

Basically, it's a straightforward site where people can submit news, rumors, buzz, etc. It's a modified version of WordPress, allowing anonymous posting, and it's nice looking. A few thoughts based on the article:

• Note how even though the post is "old", the message is still relevant.
• Note how 30-40% of his costs were on legal fees (!)
• Note how he didn't have to spend a ton of money on development -- he whipped together a simple, easy, user-generated content (UGC) web site by modifying existing packages. That's what we do for building social networks, and it saves our clients a ton of money.
• Note how he didn't do a big up-front plan -- he just did it. Then again, the cost was so low that it probably wasn't worth doing a large business plan.
• Note how the site took off due to his contacts and connections (and a bit of luck?), not due to any killer feature.