It’s not impossible, but it’s much harder.
I started my first company with like 100$ to my name. Took over a year to even be able to pay myself, had to do everything myself, no money to hire people etc. Mostly same thing for second co
Third company: I raised few million first and within 3 months we were profitable, hired fantastic engineers and moved super fast getting to billion$ valuation in just 5 years. (felt slow at the time but that was very quick).

So, do you need your own money? No, make sure your idea is good enough with a large enough addressable market to be able to get external financing.

Don’t make the mistake I did of assuming that because I’m an incredible engineer I’d be incredible at all the other parts of running a business.
Find a partner that has the skills you lack and is an easy going pitbull (unless you’re the pitbull, founding team can only have 1)

100000000% already is. CTO in the AI industry here and I don’t know anyone hiring Jr devs (that uses AI internally) since AI is already better than the best jr devs. Half of my mid devs nearing that point, AI will only get better and it’s doing it at an insane pace.