Ah the old "Gotta spend money to make money" argument. Works real nice when you're on the side with money. Why do you think we make so many alt coins? Because start up costs for larger coins is prohibitively expensive. What NXT has done is effectively mined the ENTIRETY of bitcoin. It's as if the founders were the only ones mining for the whole cycle. Is it fair for us to be buying in to that?
The beauty of the whole system is that it's fair. No matter how much money you put in, everyone will get the same return in proportion. You can't ask to make the same money for $10 as someone who invested $1000 the same time.
Now, when did you invest, that's an other story.
I myself found nxt about a week ago, and bought some. I wasn't happy I didn't found it before the genesis block, but I'm happy today that I found it last week. Someone will probably think the same thing a week from now. This can't be helped.