> "This idea of limited innovation resulting in cumulative costs is overly simplistic. The smart founder will recognize the difference between innovations that

> "This idea of limited innovation resulting in cumulative costs is overly simplistic. The smart founder will recognize the difference between innovations that will yield net returns and those that won't." I agree with you completely. Furthermore, I'd add that the view on maintenance is too simplistic also. Effective maintenance requires more than just a tech stack where the limitations are known, you'll also want something testable and refactorable. Ballooning code bases are a real problem, sometimes the smart move is to clean up the cruft. If you're smart about integrating new tech into your stack there's no reason you can end up with a solution which is both more robust and efficient. Furthermore, there's the whole scaling issue. Perhaps the mode du jour is just to assume increased server costs (regardless of where they're hosted) are just a necessary part of scaling a website to more users, but rethinking your tech stack can help keep these costs under control. Perhaps this is a decision that can wait until you have a decent userbase, but it's still a good reason to be open-minded about what benefits a new solution could bring.