Totally disagree. When you're at the point where a $50 server won't be enough, you still have a long way to scale, just by adding more hardware.
> optimizing for a single server is a waste of resources
No, I think you should spend your time wisely and actually building your product. I don't think you should spend a huge amount of time to "optimize for a single server" (whatever that means), just that a single server can be enough for a large amount of traffic.
Many startups go all-in on complex architecture, microservices and Kubernetes from the get-go (or start splitting their monolith or whatever before it's necessary) and lose a huge amount of time setting all this up (when only Netflix-sized companies really need it) at a time where they should've focused on building their product.
The point here is that you can easily scale most apps in small steps without having to indebt yourself with complex architecture from the get go, which requires having to spend huge sums of cash on sysadmins and AWS bills that don't benefit your users.
> optimizing for a single server is a waste of resources
No, I think you should spend your time wisely and actually building your product. I don't think you should spend a huge amount of time to "optimize for a single server" (whatever that means), just that a single server can be enough for a large amount of traffic.
Many startups go all-in on complex architecture, microservices and Kubernetes from the get-go (or start splitting their monolith or whatever before it's necessary) and lose a huge amount of time setting all this up (when only Netflix-sized companies really need it) at a time where they should've focused on building their product.
The point here is that you can easily scale most apps in small steps without having to indebt yourself with complex architecture from the get go, which requires having to spend huge sums of cash on sysadmins and AWS bills that don't benefit your users.