Startups are dying due to the small number of users, ENOUGH to think about scalability

If you think that the scalability of your new web application is the main thing you need to focus on ... think twice. It is safe to say that in the foreseeable future, a mass invasion of users is not expected. Instead, one should prepare for a slow increase in the number of visitors, with a possible peak in the increase in their number (for example, a translator: for example). But focusing on the architecture and scalability of your application to millions of users is not a good idea. Millions is a lot. Rather, you should prepare to fight for the first thousand users. Perhaps even less if your service is paid.

Focus on marketing. Focus on positive experiences. Focus on marketing (did I just say it twice?).

For a technical ninja like you, thinking about scalability is the easiest task. But this is not the biggest part of a startup. The most difficult:

1. To do something that people will enjoy with pleasure
2. because you solve their problem (about which they know or maybe on the contrary, did not even suspect)
3. and tell other people about your application, both on the Internet and in real life, so that many people know that you exist
4. and they could buy what you sell (this is the main purpose for which, from the very beginning of time, there is an advertisement)
')
In other words, your talk about scalability is just fear and an attempt to replace marketing decisions with technical solutions, simply because you do not know how to market your product. Yes Yes.

That is why you should love the product that you make. Love and trust. Telling people not about what your wonderful web application can do, but about how your application can be useful for them and how their lives will change for the better after they start using it.

Most startups die from the fact that they do not have enough users (or not at all), but I have not heard of any case where the cause of death was the inability to scale the application under the sudden emergence of a million visitors.

Translator's Notes:
1. The opinion of the translator is 95% identical to the opinion of the author of the article :-)
2. If someone says that in this context, to translate "Really." Is more correct as "In nature." And not "Yes, yes.", I am ready for a duel in V.K. Muller
3. The term customer is translated not as a client, but as a user, which sounds more familiar to web applications in Russian. Yes, we are all actually customers of habrahabr.ru - but still it’s more common in Russian to think of us as visitors or users.