This is a big lesson to heed. Sure, sometimes a startup really needs extravagantly scalable infrastructure. For the 99.9% of startup, no, you don't.

So the odds are you don't. Keep it very simple, very small. I can't highlight this enough. A few boxes will get you very far. If you ever actually hit the limits, throw a big party to celebrate success and only then start to think about making your infrastructure a bit (just a bit) more complex.