I suppose it depends on the expertise of the the founder or CEO in question. On balance, something that takes 50% of budget absolutely should involve oversight

I suppose it depends on the expertise of the the founder or CEO in question. On balance, something that takes 50% of budget absolutely should involve oversight greater than a single team or executive, but I'm not sure to what level without knowing more about the team dynamics at play. There are plenty of engineer founder types who have all sorts of opinions on how infrastructure spend should be divvied up...they're probably on average more well informed there than they might be on the value of good consistent branding and website. On the flip side, a sales-heavy type might have strong opinions on how much engineering is spending on keeping the ship afloat, but that doesn't necessarily make them right. Of course it's possible to be conversant within multiple modalities, so I am just talking to the average here.