“too many customers” — survival guide for the oversubscribed
demand is oxygen—until it’s smoke.
cold open
three words most founders pray for—right up to the
moment they strangle cash-flow, culture, and sleep in a single quarter.
the anatomy of abundance anxiety
“too” — surplus framed as threat.
“many” — volume that melts SLAs.
“customers” — the blessing that invoices and implodes.
capacity isn’t a ceiling; it’s a countdown.
growth gospel vs. load-balancing liturgy
slide decks glamorise hockey-stick curves—term sheets ignore
server crash costs and support-ticket avalanches.
over-demand converts FOMO into churn faster than a mis-shipped feature.
17 % – startups dying from over-scaling rather than under-funding
4.3× – increase in refund requests when response time doubles
36 h – median burnout threshold for support teams in “launch week”
throttle-then-thrill protocol
institute a wait-list. raise prices while apologising for “responsible roll-out.”
the customers who remain subsidise infrastructure for the ones you delay.
we don’t say no.
we meter yes.
footnote on selective scarcity
engineered shortage preserves brand mystique and server uptime in equal measure.
customers hate queueing—until the queue is the proof of value.
closer
say it once. watch the backlog blink first. then decide whether to
scale the stack—
or scale the price tag and stay slightly out of reach.