Database startups really struggle because they compete with free and most database users need very little from their database. Enterprise customers do have advanced needs occasionally, but often it’s just about hoarding data or tracking users, neither of which does anything for society. Database startups are unusually hard because the real customers don’t want to pay and very few founders are able to get the hard tech right and are also willing to do the schleppy work of scaling up an enterprise sales team/process.