5 a month with 1,000 users is 5,000 a month. You add in the costs and taxes and you are left with supporting a thousand users that you can't afford to hire for. If you had 2,000 users you might be able to afford someone but now you have to support 2,000 users.

If prices were tripled you could afford to staff for now and the future (r/d).

When small you need to go higher. When you are big you can use size to scale.