Main question here is that would they have done better if they had started with scale in mind. When you start you don't know how you product will look like when it has millions of users. You will likely do major product changes quite a few times.

If someone cannot scale your product which has adoption, they likely don't have insights, problem definition, capabilities, skills and resources to do that when they launch.

If I could edit my original post, I would put a rider related to capable team for service not dying.