Embracing Technical Debt
11 Jun 2025
Building a startup is a constant series of trade-offs between speed and quality, between shipping now and scaling later. One of the most misunderstood tools in that balancing act is technical debt. When used intentionally, it’s not bad engineering — it’s a strategic choice.
Understanding Technical Debt
Technical debt arises when we opt for a quicker, less optimal solution to expedite delivery. This choice can lead to additional work in the future, like accruing interest on a loan. It can complicate future changes, but some level of technical debt is inevitable — and, when managed well, even useful. Essentially, taking on technical debt allows you to make progress now but might cost you more time and effort down the line.
Embracing Technical Debt in Early Stages
When you’re in the earliest stages of your startup, product/market fit is the only thing that matters. At this point, you don’t need to worry too much about technical debt because you don’t know what your company will be doing a year from now.
Your product might will undergo a complete makeover as you align with what your customers need. Tech debt can’t be measured accurately because you don’t know what part of the code will still matter in a few months. In the early stage, you should put aside excessive worries about technical debt and focus on finding that product/market fit.
I’ve seen many early-stage startups get paralyzed by the pursuit of perfect architecture, scalable systems, and pristine code when they should be focusing on whether anyone wants their product at all. A harsh reality I learned during my time at venture building is that most startups fail not because of technical debt, but because they build something nobody wants.
The Strategic Advantages of Technical Debt
Speed to Market
In the world of early-stage startups, speed is often of the essence. Technical debt lets you move quickly, ship early, and start learning. Sometimes, speed is the only way to find out if you’re even solving the right problem. Being able to quickly experiment and evaluate your assumptions not only reduces your customer feedback loops but also introduces an “always shipping” culture, enabling everyone to continuously deliver value to customers.
Flexibility and Learning
Early-stage startups are often in a learning phase, exploring what works and what doesn’t. By releasing MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) and iterating quickly, you can learn from real user feedback rather than building in a vacuum.
Technical debt gives you the flexibility to pivot quickly when needed. If you’ve invested months in building a perfectly architected system for a feature that users don’t want, that’s a far greater waste than having to refactor code for a feature that users love.
When to Start Paying Attention to Technical Debt
You don’t always need a dashboard to tell you when technical debt is starting to hurt. You’ll feel it.
Sometimes it shows up as new features taking way longer than expected—especially when they touch certain parts of the product. A small change that “should be simple” ends up dragging because the underlying code is messy, rigid, or just hard to understand.
Other times, it’s when the same bugs keep resurfacing in one area. It’s often a sign that part of the system is overdue for a rethink. Another common sign: onboarding drags. New hires get stuck in one area far longer than expected because the architecture is convoluted or just not well documented. It slows everyone down.
At that point, you’re not just carrying debt—you’re paying interest in the form of lost time, friction, and cognitive overhead.
This is the right moment to start paying off the technical debt you’ve purposely accrued. There are several different approaches you can take to address this. Often, companies decide to hire for additional roles (e.g., a head of engineering) or bring in external consultants to help analyze the issues and put processes in place for dealing with technical debt. I’ve personally been brought in on several cases, either as a technical advisor as part of my time as portfolio CTO at Forward Partners (now Molten Ventures), or as a Fractional CTO.
Managing Technical Debt Effectively
Managing technical debt isn’t about avoiding it — it’s about staying in control. Start with some basic guardrails: a simple code review process, shared naming patterns, some agreed rules around tests. You don’t need enterprise-level standards on day one, but you do need consistency.
Refactoring doesn’t need to be a big dramatic event. The best teams clean as they go. If every pull request leaves the codebase slightly better than before, you’re on the right path. Prioritise the messy bits that slow you down the most. Don’t waste time tidying things no one touches. Focus on the debt that creates real friction.
Lean on tools that help — automated tests, static analysis, CI/CD. They catch problems early and prevent silent regressions. These tools can help you identify areas of technical debt and ensure that new code doesn’t add to the problem.
Closing Thoughts
At the end of the day, technical debt is just that: debt. Not good or bad on its own—it depends how you use it. You’ve only got so much time and budget. Spend too much on perfect code and you won’t ship. Spend too little and your product starts to crack.
The trick is knowing when to take shortcuts and being clear about it. Communicate that with your team, and with your stakeholders. If you’re going to cut a corner, flag it. That way, no one’s surprised when you say: “this will need revisiting.” You can treat those decisions as part of the process—not something to hide or apologise for.
Used well, technical debt helps you move fast and learn faster. Used poorly, it quietly strangles momentum. The difference usually comes down to awareness and timing.
No need to fear it. Just respect it.