The Problem

I was mentoring at Apps4Athens Hackathon 2.0 (AI Edition) on 15/11/2025 when I talked to a team building their first startup. They asked me for advice about choosing the right database, implementing microservices, building for horizontal scaling, and planning for massive growth.

They were looking increasingly worried about whether they were making the right architectural decisions.

Last I heard, that startup was making no money and had no users.

This scene replays constantly in tech. Engineers give startups advice designed for companies that have already won. We're solving problems that won't exist for years. And in doing so, we're often guaranteeing the startup never gets there.

The Engineering Mindset

We're trained to anticipate problems. When we see a startup building something, our pattern-matching brain starts thinking about what could break. What if you get massive user growth? What if your database becomes a bottleneck?

These are real questions. But only if you first answer: will anyone actually use this thing?

I've seen startup CTOs spend way too long architecting perfect systems. I've also done this myself. I've watched engineers implement sophisticated strategies for systems that needed basic solutions. We built beautiful, scalable systems perfectly, and nobody cared.

Most Startups Don't Hit Scaling Problems

Most startups fail early. If you're optimizing your systems for problems you'll face years later, and most companies won't make it that far, you're spending engineering effort on a fictional future.

A startup's actual problem is distribution. Sales. The inability to get customers. An early-stage startup needs to figure out if people actually want what they're building. The infrastructure to handle massive scale can come later, when they have paying customers justifying it.

The Real Opportunity Cost

Every hour an engineer spends over-architecting is an hour they're not iterating with customers. A startup needs speed, not robustness. They need to launch fast, get feedback, and pivot based on what the market tells them.

None of that requires a perfect architecture. It requires something that works today and can be upgraded when you actually have the revenue and team to justify it.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: a startup built on basic infrastructure with simple code will beat a startup with perfect microservices and enterprise monitoring if the first one has customers and the second one doesn't.

What Engineers Should Actually Say

Build something that works. Make it as simple as possible. Use boring technology. When you have real users and real traffic, you'll have the budget to fix scaling problems. You'll know exactly what to optimize because you'll be looking at real data, not speculation.

Focus on the thing that actually matters: can you acquire customers profitably? Can you build something they want? Can you grow the business?

If the answer to any of those is no, your architecture doesn't matter.

The Bottom Line

Not every startup stays simple forever. The ones that actually succeed will hire engineers specifically to solve scaling problems. They'll have resources and data to make good decisions.

What they don't need is to solve those problems years early.

The engineering comes after the business works. Not before. Stop giving startups advice for problems they'll face if they succeed. Help them succeed first.