[alcima]

There is no "TASB" for appraising Technical Debt like there is an "FASB" for Financial. So most measures resemble the parable of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant.

Trade off an extra day to do each release versus 30 days to fix the release process? Trade off an extra week to add a feature versus a month to refactor and a month of customer turmoil on the refactored release? Trade off a month of getting complete test coverage versus saving two days on a future feature development?

My guess would be that the startup founders are doing a better investment calculation than it might appear to you.

[Yadi]

Indeed, founders usually have a better complete vision the the folks around them.

Though I was just pointing that out for over time. One time around the tech-debt is not that big of a deal, until it becomes a beast and hard to overcome.