My theory is founders are leading with a crystal clear, easy to communicate vision. That is the kind of management that scales.
Founders also shape their org structure to something that suits them, while a middle manager has to work within the constraints of their organization, which are often stifling with significant overhead.
Even basic things take inordinate amounts of time for middle managers. You could ignore them, but that often has secondary impacts like not taking care of your team (promotions, good reviews, training, etc.) or not getting your team the visibility it needs.
Visibility to whom? It seems like an anti-pattern that a team should have to fight for visibility in an organization. I believe this must be related to overly centralized control structures.