Did the Cloud create the Start up Boom?

This is a very well articulated post on why there are so many startups today. Even my previous boss, an (exited) founder who started in the bad old days when you HAD to build out your own hardware made a particularly memorable quote last time we met up: 'every dude and his dog is a founder now'.

I know myself that I wouldn't have taken the leap if I had to put serious money on the table for hardware investment 1990s/early 2000s style. Being able to build a proof-of-concept on a free Amazon Micro instance knowing that you can scale up to larger sizes as needed later and also split out into multiple instances on demand only when you have the customers means that 2 or 3 founders can literally code in a bedroom surviving on ramen with no other costs except for a few domains and pycharm licenses.

The thought of the only real investment being founders' time (and the opportunity cost of using said time) is much more palatable than having to put cash on the table upfront for hardware.

The cloud has literally turned hardware provisioning into a problem that you tackle as a cost optimization when you've got decent revenue coming already rather than an upfront investment that you're not sure you can get a return on.