Or it could tarnish their reputation and kill the whole product. Lets hope the engineering of the actual product is a little better than the sales process. But I still think its kind of important not to give your potential customers a 404 as your first interaction or you run the very real risk of having zero conversions from all that homepage traffic.

  >  you run the very real risk of having zero conversions
  > from all that homepage traffic.

Dear God. Don't use web-y start-up lingo in situations where none of the platitudes apply. R-PI faces demand severely outstripping demand, which is the polar opposite of what conversion rate-optimizing Bla-ly companies experience.

I can see how their product being so wildly popular that it sells out in less than an hour could put a damper on its future commercial success.

Wait, that makes no sense, I can't see that at all, nevermind.