The middle ground between the places trying to be mini-googles and places running their own server under a desk has been squeezed pretty hard by SaaS/PaaS stuff

The middle ground between the places trying to be mini-googles and places running their own server under a desk has been squeezed pretty hard by SaaS/PaaS stuff - you either run your small business entirely on other people's services and sweat OR you have a big enough budget to have the faux-SRE experience. In my experience only owners who had enough momentum from previous businesses with that setup or who just maintained a fairly small pool of revenue (and so didn't change.) Also the economy went through a lot of M&A because its hard in the middle, failures are catastrophic, and paying some guy who will probably take you to beer lunches to host your stuff makes you look smart to all the other up and coming CEOs.