Have seen a local tournament series achieve good results with really tiny starting chip stacks. Dealer occasionally does have to make change from the pot, but that only happens noticeably often at loose tables. They go with 5xT100, 5xT500, 2xT1000, 1xT5000. Since they mostly do turbo blind levels they don't even use T25s, but you could easily replace one T100 with four T25s in that configuration.
I myself have a cheapo chip set that goes with slightly different starting stacks: 4xT25, 4xT100, 3xT500, 3xT1000, 1xT5000. (Add extra T100s-T5000s for coloring up of course). Can fit stacks for 2x9 players plus extras for coloring up in a 500ct suitcase.
If I get around to make a quality STT set some day, I'd go with slightly more chips per player: 4xT25, 9xT100, 8xT500, 5xT1000, and T5000s in reserve (T100s and T500s as well but no T1000s) for coloring up during the late phases. A set fit for 20 players would be at 600 chips then including color-up reserve.