Ask HN: Any startups not using Public Cloud?

There has been a lot of talk recently about the Public Cloud premium, how expensive it can get to run something in the 3 Big Cloud Providers, and generally to be cautious about it. Yet, when I look around, I fail to find success stories of companies that started/stayed outside of the public cloud. (To be clear, I'm constraining it to 2015+, when public cloud really picked up. If your company started before that, you didn't have much of an choice).

So my question is: Are there good examples of startups that have managed to successfully operate outside the public cloud in recent years? What has your experience been like?