[resters]

Startups take on a lot of types of debt. Sometimes they hire less experienced people, you could call that HR debt. Sometimes they work out of a cramped or less ergonomic office, you could call that facilities debt.

Sometimes startup founders have very little management experience and hire others who have very little experience, you could call that management debt.

Taking on debt of any kind should be done strategically with a clear awareness of the trade-offs associated with it.

There's nothing intrinsically bad about any of the types of debt.

I think the most useful mental model is more risk-oriented. Think of the business as a portfolio of risks. Adopting a zero technical debt strategy reduces the risk of unexpected technology failures, but increases the risk of competitors coming to market sooner, etc. Successful businesses are the ones that navigate and make choices that turn out in hindsight to have been smart about the allocation of that risk portfolio.

In my view the relevant case study for technical debt is that day years ago when Facebook's homepage malfunctioned and showed the PHP source. This revealed some pretty ugly code that had apparently been written by Zuckerberg. Facebook already had a valuation in the billions on the basis of code that would not pass code review at most startups.