If they do start with that much, one thing will be certain - they will have far less shortly thereafter :becky:
I also noticed you said you wish you started with more. If by "started" you mean your trading career, I would say that more is definitely not better. You probably would have lost the same percentage (roughly) that you lost in real history, but the dollar amount would be higher.
Better to start small. I have four years of experience watching the habits of 40,000 traders on this forum.... I cannot say it enough, start small and focus on loss instead of on profit. Most won't listen, a lot of people start trading futures with no prior experience, trading CL with no prior experience, and scalping, with no prior experience. Talk about the worst possible choices for a beginner to learn on... but I digress.
My answer to the question is: Start with the lowest amount of money needed to carry you for 1-2 years, having defined ahead of time (business plan) set "installments" of money on something like a quarterly basis, that you will pay yourself as part of your tuition or learning expense (ie: re-funding your brokerage account).
Some people can figure it out faster than 1 year, some people can't figure it out after 10 years. It all depends on how good you are at measuring yourself and making sure you don't keep repeating the same mistakes.