When Proper Database Design Kills Startups

Senior engineers kill startups by applying enterprise database practices to Complex domains. Traditional normalization assumes stable requirements and migration infrastructure, but startups have neither. Instead of spreading domains across dozens of tables, use aggregate thinking: model business entities as aggregates, store them as JSONB in Postgres, extract queryable fields as indexed columns. You keep ACID guarantees and relational integrity while shipping features in days instead of waiting weeks for schema migrations.