Does it take a lot of money to start your own advertising agency?

ALL YOU NEED IS A CLIENT. Accomplish that hurdle and you got yourself an Ad agency.

Advertising takes a whole team of people. One good designer can run a design firm alone. That's the whole difference.

I agree. You have to have the proper resources in place to be able to give the client success. You do not want your first client to fall flat once they hit the market. That will be the first and your last client. I would say you need to staff up and be fully prepared before jumping into the waters.

Technically, yes ALL YOU NEED IS A CLIENT, but you want to be able to craft an effective campaign that will bring that client a good ROI.

I've known a 2-man agency who've been around for 3 years. Both partners are raking in the bucks.

All you need is a client. To stay in the business you'd have to be really good or really cheap.

YES all you need is a client. Everything can be farmed out to freelance and specialty shops. NEED CREATIVE? Hire freelancers. NEED A WEBSITE? Hire a website company. NEED TO SHOOT A COMMERCIAL? Hire a production company. At the end of the day all you need is a client and great creative solutions to their problems. THAT IS IT!!!! The problem that people get into is they try to grow to fast and have all the stuff I talked about IN HOUSE. This is stupid in my opinion. Why don't you make great relationships with professionals in their field and leave it to them? And only pay them when you need them. I currently work in a small shop and these guys are smart in that respect. They have a core team of about 10 people. A producer,receptionist, accountant, Creative director, Art Director, two Copywriters. One for English and one for Spanish. and three account people. I would say if you were going to start your agency beef up your print work, logo design, and guerrilla campaigns and show them first. then some creative radio. At the very end I would show some commercials and web work that you have done. The reason I say this is because I do not believe you will have an opportunity to pitch a client like Microsoft or Apple. I think you will have a fantastic opportunity to pitch the local chain of pizzerias or maybe a new bar in town and in that respect they are looking for inexpensive creative solutions to come up with a brand identity. YOU can do this for them. I would say for you to be able to start out it would be a great idea for you to get a good GD AD and CW that really want to do this combine your portfolios to one website and get started. THIS IS SOOOOOOOO EXCITING!!!!! YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!!! Go get em TIGER!! By the way I am really really poor otherwise I would have done this months ago. I am so jealous :)