Hardware and performance

A startup wouldn't do much, in fact I have started recommending those who start from shared host, not to consider the very basic accounts for moodle, unless they are only using to test moodle or use it as a staging server, I can understand the complexity of setting up a cloud node, where everything starts from ground zero, but then there are Pro/Business shared accounts offered by shared hosting that would at least let you test run your website with some users (now that depends how much resources are allocated) as for some hosting providers Pro/Business means lesser accounts per server while keeping hardware resources as equal as any other shared accounts, whilst to some, on top of lesser accounts, they do allocate some more resources (like more CPU cores and more RAM), I manage to find a shared hosting provider that gives enough to start with (8 CPU cores, 16GB RAM), and you can allocate the resource pool to make isolated accounts, or allocate all to one account, on top you can buy more (upto 1024 cores and 2048GB RAM) as you grow, this gives you freedom of expansion and at the same time works just like any other shared host (support, CPanel etc), if you want I can provide you links.