The project creator has exactly 1 share with a leadtime of 1 when they instantiate the project, so they are able to approve their own initial expenses.

But they should be very careful about how much they claim or it will discourage others from joining their project.

I didn't mention this on the protocol page because it's already very long and I just wanted it to be a general summary. There are a lot of other small things like this that you'll encounter when you think through the entire process. I'll publish the full protocol over the next couple of weeks.