Actually you are not far off: and there is a post about this in 2017; we prepared for what was supposed to be a third party app on maidsafe.
We were not planning to have to build an entire backend so I didn’t expect to raise more than 50k. In fact I was targeting 30k
2 things changed: competition, so now need marketing elements involved and building a complex backend which we see as the safex blockchain.
here: Safe Exchange Update February 13, 2017
instead of spending my 3k monthly I saved it and with the rise of bitcoin I was able to allocate back into the project. So I don’t feel anything wrong in how I am conducting finance. How few people on this earth would do the same I am not worried about it. Note: by now monthly server costs for seed nodes/wallet nodes etc is over 2k/month going on into a 3rd year