It's because some startups have developers that open w3schools, start typing examples, and somehow ship a quasi-working proof-of-concept that goes into production.
There's a bit of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" here, but a whole lot of "get with the program" still required.
Well as a professional Systems Administrator, it pisses me off more than it probably should. It's like you want to know why I'm worth what I'm asking because when your shit falls down and goes boom, I'll get you back up and operational in minutes or an hour.
Because it's my fucking job to help you manage your IT risks. Azure, Heroku, AWS aren't replacements for Systems Administration, they're just tools in my arsenal. I don't understand the mentality it takes to go into business (beta or not) without having SOME understanding of your risk. The fact that DO paid you a not insignificant amount due to downtime, means you're damn lucky.
Do you know of anyone who didn't get deadly serious about backups before they had a sour taste of data loss?
Me, I was just lucky my first really interesting experience was on a big UNIX(TM) Version 6 system, with a couple of user accessible DECTapes. Buying a tape was cheap enough, and the whole thing was neat ... and then I learned the -rf flags to rm. And had any critical data I lost on that DECTape.
Today I do nightly backups of my home systems to LTO-4 tapes (as well as offsite of the most critical to rsync.net a time zone away).
Yes, of course. A full fledged sysadmin is expensive, and startups will typically make several costly mistakes before going to that expense.
This is not surprising, and is not even regrettable. If the business can't support the overhead of someone who doesn't directly bring in revenue, then it can't. And if there's a large investment that makes good infrastructure engineering possible, first-time entrepreneurs might not realize that they need that function.
The key to long term success is in realizing what you will need before it's too late to get it.
There's a bit of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" here, but a whole lot of "get with the program" still required.