So here's what I found out. $300/month for 10U (I have 9U) with a one year contract. The startup costs are really hard on me so I need to think about it. For those of you who do own Hosting companies, does that price seem right? Here's a good read on Server Colocation vs. Manager Servers: http://order.delaware.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=catalog.prodInfo&productID=61 It looks like Managed servers are becoming more popular...
I know your intentions are to have a huge company, start out small though. As much as you dislike reseller accounts they are probably a better place to start so that you can afford to keep it up even if you have no customers. Web hosting is a cramped market. You have a better chance of failing than succeeding. Not that it is impossible, but don't put yourself in too much debt.
You will need to identify your market carefully...try to do something different from the rest...The hosting market is saturated and there are loads of one man bands running sites from a reseller account/vps. I started doing this but quickly found that the upgrade to a dedicated was necessary....I can safely say that at best, I broke even. It is a difficult market to survive in....good luck