I've seen too many examples of this... but its not limited to start-ups. Had a term for it - RDD, resume driven development, where the teams focus is developing their resume as opposed to a product.
What's funny to me is that I've had a track record of leading and building core parts of successful applications used by millions of people. Yet, when I go to interviews, often they don't seem to care about my successes. And, to them, my methods look ancient. And, they express disbelief when I ask for $200k (a paltry sum compared to how much time and money that they'll spend).