[aahortwwy]

This is the standard rebuttal, but I don't buy it.

> would the startup even exist if they had spent 2 or 3 times as long developing the MVP?

It does not take 2-3 times longer to write good software. Arguably a non-shitty version of our MVP would've actually been faster to develop, because we have a custom web framework, ORM, and build tool when we could've used mature open-source projects in their place.

> it takes more expensive engineers to execute

This is probably true, or perhaps "more carefully selected" (which just means a more expensive recruitment process).