What if the company is in a tight market and it differentiates itself by being reliable and be able to constantly implement new features as well as competitors features quickly? I would assume taking on technical debt, unless you can bankrupt your competitors in one blow, is suicide since in the long run whoever have the least technical interest payments wins. That assumes the company has done those four things you mentioned solidly.
I feel you are talking about a situation that rarely exists. It does happen at least somewhat when you see a large incumbent versus a startup, but in those cases a startup is generally nimble and has a fighting chance.
IMO, if technical debt is what destroys your startup then you probably so poorly understood the customer problem early on that you engineered a solution that was going to fail either way. In all the companies I help I almost always see bad technical decisions, but their marketing is what is hurting them the most not their tech debt.
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What if the company is in a tight market and it differentiates itself by being reliable and be able to constantly implement new features as well as competitors features quickly? I would assume taking on technical debt, unless you can bankrupt your competitors in one blow, is suicide since in the long run whoever have the least technical interest payments wins. That assumes the company has done those four things you mentioned solidly.
I feel you are talking about a situation that rarely exists. It does happen at least somewhat when you see a large incumbent versus a startup, but in those cases a startup is generally nimble and has a fighting chance.
IMO, if technical debt is what destroys your startup then you probably so poorly understood the customer problem early on that you engineered a solution that was going to fail either way. In all the companies I help I almost always see bad technical decisions, but their marketing is what is hurting them the most not their tech debt.