Building something quickly that can be broken up over time is the best way to an MVP, and you can deal with scalability issues when you HAVE scalability issues. I consider scalability to be a good problem to have, because by that time you have actual traction.
If you are a bigco with a big marketing budget in a field in which you already have experience and business then by all means scale to millions of users at day one. Don't take on the cost of it in a startup, because the problem is TRACTION not technology with regards to scaling.