[delazeur]

I imagine just about every company, startup or not, has compliance issues; it's just a matter of degree. (Then again, I am an environmental compliance consultant, so there's some selection bias in which companies I interact with.)

The qualifiers in "successful startup" and "serious compliance issues" make it hard to say whether the statement is objectively true or not, but I see two factors that probably exacerbate the problem for startups: regulations designed by established companies to thwart upstart competitors, and the "disrupt"/"move fast and break things" attitude that doesn't mesh well with red tape.