Interesting to note how to Joel Spolsky says that $50.000 is "a very small amount of money". Where I'm from that amount would be fairly high for an angel investor.
That sort of thing scales with cost-of-living. Joel was making NYC money at the time of founding Fog Creek. $50k in South Carolina takes you halfway to a decent house. In NYC, a salary that big is barely enough to pay for an apartment in Manhattan for a year.
Now you're talking about how he made that money work for his company. Might as well throw in the whole "don't pay myself or my co-founder," "work odd consulting jobs to get more cash," and "work out of my grandmother's old apartment," among various other tricks of the bootstrapper's trade.
I know what you mean but despite the high potential return on the investment his articles gave him he still didn't throw money at it to try and make it happen quickly.
i.e. the quote suggests rather than $50,000 is all you need to start something like Fog Creek the lesson might be even starting from his position which was likely to be more privaledged than yours or mine he still kept costs as low as he could until he turned a profit.
Joel did corporate work (MSFT, Juno) for 10 years, had MSFT stock from the early 90s, etc. If you did corporate work for the entire decade of the 90s, were single, and owned hot stock, and still couldn't have $50K, then I question whether you have enough financial discipline to run a company.
Big difference from fresh college grads or undergrads.
Maybe it's time to move...