We have adopted Kubernetes at our startup. It's solved a couple of problems but created a whole lot more. We aren't at the stage that we need the scaling yet.
We evaluated Kubernetes and chose Nomad instead. It works really well (although not as feature rich as K8s) and it allows smaller teams to understand how the whole setup works. It lowers key man risks, IMO.
We adopted Kubernetes at our startup, it solved most ci/cd and devops issues for the team. We didn't need the scaling either, we have at max maybe 2 containers of a service but we know we are ready.