Yes, and most successful companies who started in the last ~20 years started ( and many continue ) with a monolith and a MySQL database. Only the mega-cap ones

Yes, and most successful companies who started in the last ~20 years started ( and many continue ) with a monolith and a MySQL database. Only the mega-cap ones started to pursue other options mostly due to their type of business and bucket-loads of "free" VC money with explicit orders to burn it and get "unicorn" status - which involves hiring thousands of developers in record time and the whole thing turns into a zoo. Which is an organizational problem, mostly not a tech one. Other than the ones we pretend are the whole Universe, there are thousands and thousands of medium to big companies with billions of revenue who started their product with a monolith and a MySQL database and many still do just that.