I built whoaverse during my studies which went on to become voat. You do not need a lot of resources to run such a site, but you do need a way to monetize it. We ran on donations and the ads that we ran were never profitable. Donations are not profit either, so it was working purely because we could afford some time off to work on it. This does not work in the long run, if you can no longer justify working for free. I am currently building 20-things.com, but I doubt that there is any interest for redittors to jump off at this point.