Except that lack of some of these basics makes small companies extremely hard to pivot and modify their products for larger customer base - pretty much cementing their fate as a failures.

Even small teams of 3 people can benefit from basic code reviews and CI pipeline that makes them significantly more capable of responding to new business requirements than startups bogged down in 5 months of technical debt.

Sure its dangerous. But the question was, why is it so chaotic in a some small startups?

And you can't have everything. You can insist on process all the way to bankruptcy. Whatever the risks, sometimes the one that succeeds is going full-on to the finish line.

Man, that's so clear I have to make a tattoo with that