Embracing the 3-Month Rule: A Pragmatic Approach to Unscalable Solutions in Development

In the world of startup development, the mantra of “doing things that don’t scale” often becomes a critical pathway to innovation, yet practical strategies for such an approach are seldom discussed, especially when it comes to coding. Drawing from my eight months of experience building an AI podcast platform, I’ve established a straightforward framework known as the “3-Month Rule.” This approach allows unscalable hacks to exist for a limited time—three months—to demonstrate their value or face the chopping block.

Rethinking Scalability: The Startup Perspective

As developers, we are often conditioned to focus on crafting scalable systems from the outset. We picture intricate architectures featuring design patterns, microservices, and distributed systems designed to handle vast numbers of users. However, in the startup environment, dedicating resources to scale for anticipated users can often feel like a misguided effort. The 3-Month Rule compels me to focus on creating straightforward, if imperfect, code that provides real insights into user needs.

Current Implementation: Practical Infrastructure Hacks

Here are several of my current hacks that, rather than being rudimentary, have proven to be quite insightful.

1. Unifying Operations on a Single Virtual Machine (VM)
Instead of spinning up multiple services, everything from the database to the web server runs on a single $40/month VM. While this lacks redundancy and relies on manual backups, the benefits have been transformative. I’ve gained a much clearer understanding of my actual resource requirements in just two months. Rather than investing in a complicated Kubernetes setup, I learned that my “AI-driven” platform’s peak consumption is merely 4GB of RAM. Each crash offers valuable lessons about failure points—insights that would not have surfaced in a more sophisticated environment.

2. Hardcoded Configurations for Swift Changes
Configurations are embedded directly into the code as constants, rather than utilizing external rules or files. This method allows for rapid identification and alteration of values through a simple code search. In three months, this straightforward approach has saved me an invaluable amount of engineering time while maintaining excellent tracking of changes via version control.

3. Utilizing SQLite in Production
Despite its simplicity, SQLite has proven to be remarkably effective for my web app, managing up to 50 concurrent users with ease. Throughout this experience, I’ve learned that my application’s demands skew predominantly toward reads rather than writes. This realization means