As an SRE, when talking with startups in the SaaS space and providing advice, one of the questions that I am often asked is “how do I ensure XYZ system is scalable/reliable under load before launch?”
My advice is always the same. Don’t worry about it!
Some systems, such as airplanes, cars, machinery, healthcare, taxes, voting and anything else where a life or something that would affect someone’s life is involved- these need to have rigorous processes to ensure they work perfectly from Day Zero.
On the other hand, your startup focusing on automatically sending newsletters to potential customers, or scraping restaurant sites to get their opening hours, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. What’s the worst that can happen? Your startup dying from over-success is significantly less common than it dying from never launching. If you spend thousands on trying to make it scalable now instead of later, more than likely you’ll just run out of road and never launch.
Just launch the freaking thing already! Get some eyes on it, then scale.
Oh, and don’t waste the good days.