This was a more generalized question for the community to think about. I actually am an engineer, and was seeing if there might be a positive way to help startups ease the pains you mentioned.
It also seems that topics like this would be useful to discuss in the HNN feedback loop, given that many people on here are experienced engineers and entrepreneurs who are well acquainted with these pains.
Honestly - it seems like there's not really a premium for non-eng roles, so that might be why the threads haven't really arrived (I haven't noticed them either). Not to say any given startup can't use a rockstar marketer or biz dev - they just probably don't expect to get them from HN :) It seems that by most standards, hackers are engineers. I don't agree with that (and not saying anyone here necessarily does either) - but that might be another reason for it.