I had ACA coverage before we offered group health insurance to our employees and did not find these things to be true: the network for my ACA silver plan was the same (fine) network as we get now, the deductible options are the same (but I was opting for higher deductibles to go with an HSA on the ACA plan, which is what I think most startup employees should do), and the out-of-pocket costs were the same.

I suspect that a lot of people alarmed by ACA costs are really just observing that their employers were subsidizing a lot of stuff for them. That's true! Employers who give you group coverage directly are usually giving you a shadow pay raise in the background to make the numbers look better!

But for startups, the difference between the individual market and the small group market probably aren't usually that big --- as you'd expect, since a small startup isn't really aggregating much risk.