[lapcat]

> How does one finance a project or a company with increased maintenance costs

You seem to be assuming that the company will eventually pay off the technical debt rather than just continue accumulating it and lowering production quality.

[shermantanktop]

? This is the system working as designed. The whole game, from startup to fortune 500, is to accumulate market power fast enough to avoid tech debt swallowing you whole.

Once you have market power (which means different things for different companies) you can safely feed the tech debt monster just as little as you feel like.