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Choosing a Database for a Growing SaaS Startup

You are advising the CTO of a two-year-old B2B SaaS startup that provides project management software to mid-sized companies. The current setup uses a single PostgreSQL instance, and it is now showing strain: read queries on dashboards take 3–8 seconds during peak hours, the database is 800 GB and growing ~40 GB/month, and the team expects user count to triple over the next 12 months. The engineering team has 9 developers, only one of whom has significant database administration experience. Budget is constrained but not severely limited. The CTO is weighing four options: 1. Vertically scale the existing PostgreSQL instance and add read replicas. 2. Migrate to a managed distributed SQL database (e.g., CockroachDB or Spanner-like service). 3. Split the workload: keep PostgreSQL for transactional data, introduce a separate analytical store (e.g., ClickHouse or BigQuery) for dashboards. 4. Migrate to a NoSQL document database (e.g., MongoDB or DynamoDB). Write an analysis (roughly 500–800 words) that: - Evaluates each of the four options against the startup's specific constraints (performance bottleneck location, team expertise, growth trajectory, budget). - Identifies the key trade-offs and risks of each option. - Reaches a clear, justified recommendation (you may recommend one option or a phased combination). - Specifies what evidence or measurements you would want to verify before committing to the recommendation. Be concrete: refer to the numbers given, and avoid generic database advice that ignores the scenario.