Ask HN: How do you handle tech debt in startups?

[amoh14]

I often see tech debt as a common problem in early stage startups. Startups ship fast for good reason, with velocity as a higher priority than stability. This shows up later with frequent crashes, slower development speeds, frustrated senior engineers who join later, lower retention rates.

I also feel that the problem can be somewhat mitigated by some simple strategies and probably just one person as a focussed resource for this.

Has anyone come across a tech consultant specialising in just startup SRE? Not suggesting that tech debt is an easy problem or can be completely solved. Wondering if there's a more generally available solution.

[mrbishalsaha]

For me, I believe building a small MVP myself, scaling it and then building a proper v1 with a better foundation and team.

Repeat every 3 years minimum (if viable after PMF), learn design principles, core USP offerings, remove spaghetti code and building documentation.