  We investigate the minimal performance, in terms of beam luminosity and
detector size, of a neutrino factory to achieve a competitive physics reach for
the determination of the mass hierarchy and the discovery of leptonic CP
violation. We find that a low luminosity of $2\times 10^{20}$ useful muon
decays per year and 5 GeV muon energy aimed at a 10 kton magnetized liquid
argon detector placed at 1300 km from the source provides a good starting
point. This result relies on $\theta_{13}$ being large and assumes that the
so-called platinum channel can be used effectively. We find that such a minimal
facility would perform significantly better than phase I of the LBNE project
and thus could constitute a reasonable step towards a full neutrino factory.
