The advice in this article isn't "don't worry if your plan [or product] isn't scalable." It's "getting your first 1,000 users is usually not a scalable process.

The advice in this article isn't "don't worry if your plan [or product] isn't scalable." It's "getting your first 1,000 users is usually not a scalable process." The idea is that you need to do some serious legwork, and involve high-touch, high-response tactics to nurture and cultivate your early userbase. You're tending to every plant in the garden, personally, by hand. That's not a scalable process, but it can be necessary before being able to transition into scale mode. This advice is offered in opposition to the "build it and they will come" approach, in which you build a product, throw in a few theoretical viral loops and growth-hack mechanics, maybe go for a bit of PR pickup, and then assume the product will achieve scale on its own. A lot of growth plots don't start off linear or exponential. They start off with a few staircases.