Also, many start-ups seem to do fine without formal management structure up to 50 or more employees. The CEO / CTO is still coding, talking to customers, hiring, and making the product better.
Getting "all managery" in early stages seems like a huge misstep to me. The skills needed to successfully create a start-up are far more rare than those needed to be a good manager.
I really dislike almost everything Oracle and Larry Ellison, but he had an early-days adage "There are 2 jobs at Oracle: you're either building software or selling it". At a early-stage startup most people should be doing both.
Getting "all managery" in early stages seems like a huge misstep to me. The skills needed to successfully create a start-up are far more rare than those needed to be a good manager.