[ryanto]

It depends, technical debt lets the team build features quickly today at the cost of slowing down future development.

Startups with a short runway probably don't have a future, so technical debt can be viewed as something with little downside that gets you to market faster. The tradeoff is that as your runway gets shorter debt makes it harder to try new things.

I'd say don't worry too much about technical debt before p/m fit. However, don't let anyone on your team use debt as an excuse for half-assing something that could deter finding market fit.