[fhirzall]

Every single product including the ones that go hockey-stick start out as prototypes that don't need to be prematurely optimized for scaling. That doesn't mean you shouldn't plan ahead with best practices for performance / etc, but the bulk majority of startups will not reach product-market-fit with the first version of their product. It takes months and years of iteration to be able to put up a hockey-stick growth curve.

Offering up a refined, live version of the product is non-negotiable and completely achievable with the tools mentioned in the post, but adopting services that simplify your infrastructure processes gives you the focus that an early stage product needs.

I'm 100% with that you should control your infrastructure if you're an established company, brand, or product, but we're coming at this from a startup's standpoint where speed of iteration & shipping features make a huge difference in the eventual outcome of the startup.

[pmlnr]

Sorry if I misphrased it, I didn't mean premature optimisation: I wanted to mean planning for it.

EDIT: my biggest question is still the why always focus on new features compared to stability. Think from the point of the customer - eg. when you're using something -, and grab, let's see, skype: they are sacrificing everything stable in order to catch up with the competition. I'd be extremely surprised if they are doing better this way instead of focusing on being rock solid with a small feature set. The latter results in a small, but steady growth - not the one VC prefers for certain - because people fall back to it when the other shiny fails, and, eventually, just stick to it, because 'it just works'. Don't get me wrong, incremental new features is good, but the working core product - the one that is making the money - should always come first, ahead of the shiny. Obviously my logic assumes the product is making money.