When do you really not need container orchestration for a small microservices project?

Hey everyone, I'm starting a project with a few microservices and they aren't super busy right now. We're trying to figure out the best way to deploy them. Kubernetes seems like the go-to for big microservice setups, but I'm thinking, is it too much hassle for something small? I mean, all that extra operational stuff. Are there times when just using Docker Compose, or even just running services on VMs with some simple scripts, is better and makes more sense early on? When does Kubernetes, with all its cool features like scaling and finding services, become worth all the extra complexity for a microservice setup that's growing but still not huge?