I have to disagree here. Having just come out of a failed startup, one of the (many) things that hurt us was having the primary product direction and technical

I have to disagree here. Having just come out of a failed startup, one of the (many) things that hurt us was having the primary product direction and technical expertise belong to different people. We were racing against time and lost. A lot of time was spent transferring ideas between people, and implementing something that wasn't quite right. I can't imagine any startup in the same situation not having at least SOME similar overhead. For a small startup without funding, this can't be optimal.