Small startups use junior talent for most services. They are not hiring the best hr team, marketing, sales and development. They don't have unless amount of money. They will pick one or two areas where they have an advantage and hire a strong person or two.
I think we have wildly different expectations of the scale of "small startups".
If you can afford to full-time hire an entire hr team, an entire marketing team, an entire sales team and an entire engineering org, then you're able to pay an AWS bill.
