A starting budget is hard to define indeed, thats why i gave such a big window. But big enough to give you all the stuff you need to make competitive content, a decent marketing budget, and explained it would update once a week like average and would start with the average amount of scenes, which from what i've seen (started researching this recently as you know) which is probably between 12-25 for top sites with content you know people would want. Blacked.Com only had to launch with 12, as they know juts how good their content was. the higher quality, the less you have to give.
But yeah, the topic wasn't really about what we need to spend to startup, everybodys will be somewhat different based on their marketing level, connections, skillset, etc - but that doesn't change the member base a great deal as you eventually get the same product in the end. a traditional paysite with similar volume of updates, similar marketing avenues, etc wont really be worlds apart.
Interested information though.
always appreciate your posts as you are alot more open with information than most