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Microsoft (operating system, SQL database, programming languages / environments) and Oracle (databases, partial credit for programming language (Java)) could be

Microsoft (operating system, SQL database, programming languages / environments) and Oracle (databases, partial credit for programming language (Java)) could be considered hard-tech software companies with outcomes (so far) that are many multiples of those you mentioned.

cft 10y ago
Those ones (along with Google and Microsoft that are arguable hard tech) were founded prior to web 2.0. Since about 2002 no hard tech software startups achieved any scale- they are sort of all "moving up the stack". When they emerged (Android Inc) they are promptly swallowed. In the mid-2000s there were Yelp (from the software perspective, a simple website with Lucene backend and Youtube - a simple website with Flash player and ffmpeg transcoding command). It's probably a sign of consolidation of the industry.