It's sad to think of how, years ago, I spent 3 long years of my life working part-time, and living on potatoes, beans and next to nothing in order to develop and start to produce a product that ran on the Commodore 64. If I'd had money I could have done the whole thing in 3 or 4 months. After those 3 years I was finally building the first batch of my product when Commodore announced they were going under.
With crowd-sourcing, things would have gone very differently. I envy the youngsters of today, with inexpensive PC's, free software for everything from circuit modeling, to code editors, to schematic design, to PCB layout, to 3-D circuit bd modeling, cheap 3-D printers, the web for free information and tech support, free long-distance phone calls, virtually free on-line advertising, etc.
Life is getting good, just as I am getting old.