Why do you ask?

Are you trying to understand if you need/should seek startup capital for your venture?

Or are you trying to understand how companies are leveraging the cloud to dramatically reduce startup costs?

If it's the second, you're right re the capital requirements are lower. It's easier to start a business today than it has ever been. We have more access to resources and mentors than we've ever had, plus the costs to start a business keep falling due to cloud and crowdsourced technology.

Just look at the price of 1 GB of storage – 30 years ago it was $300,000, the year Facebook started it was $1 and today it’s <10 cents.

If it's the first, that's something only you and your team can decide.

There are *a lot* of opinions on when/if/how much, and a lot of resources and people you can chat with to help you come to the best decision. You can use these articles as a starting point:

Venture Capital, Angels or Bootstrap? via Gigaom
[http://gigaom.com/2008/06/15/venture-capital-angels-or-bootstrap/]

Should You Bootstrap Or Raise Money For Your Startup? via Forbes
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stellafayman/2013/07/01/should-you-bootstrap-or-raise-money-for-your-startup/]

Why Bootstrapping Is Just As Over-Rated As Raising Venture Capital via TechCrunch
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/07/why-bootstrapping-over-rated/]

Why You Shouldn't Raise VC Money via Inc
[http://www.inc.com/mark-peter-davis/why-you-should-not-raise-venture-capital-money.html]

The amount of money a startup raises shouldn’t be the only metric of respect via Pando Daily [http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/30/the-amount-of-money-a-startup-raises-shouldnt-be-the-metric-of-respect/]

Best of luck!