Startups can waste so many cycles optimizing for bullshit that's for sure. Or at least the tiny details that may or may not improve the product experience, or more important the revenue part.

Doing to the right optimizations at the right scale is a difficult balance. A lot of startups are investing thousands (or more important critical hours of runway time) in making super pretty websites and mobile apps when a simple non-JS HTML page where they figure out who their customer is or what product they really should be selling.

But then there are products where the mobile/web app's UX is the product because the industry is old/stagnant and haven't figured out tech. For example there are quite a few startups whose sole purpose is making buying insurance on your phone easy from a UX standpoint. Taxi companies could have made cellphone GPS/app driven services long before Uber but didn't, etc.