Large robotics organizations such as self-driving car startups. They currently operate relatively independently under large multi-national corporations.
They have all the trappings of a post-PMF startup like org charts, titles, performance reviews, comp packages but have not proven their business models.
Org charts and performance reviews are things basic to any big organization. Even three men and a dog need to know who walks the dog.
Accidentally, the "organization bloat" mirrors my experience in big companies, so maybe the analogy isn't that bad after all actually.
The company will probably fail if no one walks the dog, or if it is put in charge.
But to your point, there is no need for an org chart if the tasks and assignments are identified and assigned collectively. Not that you’d know if from this thread, but there do exist non hierarchical systems of governance.
- non trivial hardware
- games
I think it generalizes to a conjunction of: a delayed-value AND a need for narrowly-specialized-execution.
One reservation is that I do think that as startups such organizations are more fit than corporates: to succeed, the abundance of loyalist political hacks should be lower and the abundance of execution veterans is much higher.