Is It True for a Lot of Small and Medium Shops?

I don't have any data to back up whether startups would behave differently in that way versus someone at an enterprise area. But again, if you are a software developer, even at a big enterprise and your customer is a hundred person B.I. team inside of your organization, it never sees your actual customers,. then you still have a customer base. I think there's still an intrinsic feeling of frustration if your work is proven or forced to be meaningless because it can't get through the pipeline. If you're putting effort in and you're building something new,  you have this desire to see it go somewhere.