Yes, this is what I would also recommend.

You can get really far with the managed services from your cloud provider.

If you're already familiar with Docker containers, just that already gives you plenty of options. I think every platform now provides a way to just run containers behind a load balancer with a few simple steps.

Yes, maybe it's a form of vendor lock-in, but if your worry is acquiring customers, and growing a company, Kubernetes is probably not helping you in this case.