What is the best way to balance technical debt and new feature development at an early-stage startup?

If you're a startup with limited resources (time, capital, manpower), leveraging technical debt smartly is crucial to successfully getting your business to its next stage. Far too often companies will ignore or actively avoid technical debt, spend a ton of resources on a project, only to discover later on that customers don't actually want their software! The only way to avoid this is to build with customer feedback along the way. This necessitates that features are continually adjusted based on user feedback, improved, and finalized through multiple iterations. This is why technical debt is so powerful: trading perfection for speed in the short term, ultimately lets you successfully build what your customers want in the long term.

Technical debt is like the little shortcuts and quick fixes we make in the code. It's the trade-off between getting cool features out fast and making sure our codebase is top-notch for the long haul. We have noticed 3 important examples that contribute a lot to Technical Debt: 1) Outdated Libraries - we often don't update the libraries because customer-requested features become the priority. 2) Code Duplication - Junior Devs often do this rookie mistake, instead of writing scalable code, they keep duplicating 3) No Documentation - Almost every startup I speak to, never documents their coding practices and conventions.

We have figured out an easy way to fix tech issues: writing stuff down. When we spot a problem that needs a quick fix, we make sure to jot it down. Why? Well, when the team looks back and sees how we solved similar issues, it's like having a cheat code for fixing things later on. By sticking to this habit, we're not just solving problems; we're building a toolbox that makes fixing stuff easier in the future. It's like leaving little hints for our future selves, making the whole process a bit easier every time.

the key to balancing technical debt with new feature development in an early-stage startup lies in prioritizing technical debt based on its impact and urgency. Not all technical debt requires immediate attention; focus on the debt that significantly affects product functionality, security, or usability, and that which impedes new feature development. This strategic approach allows for effective allocation of resources, ensuring both the stability of your existing infrastructure and the innovation necessary for growth.

the best way to balance technical debt and new feature development at an early-stage startup is to adopt a strategic approach to paying off technical debt. Techniques like refactoring, rewriting, or replacing code should be applied in alignment with your product vision and goals. Choose the timing of debt repayment—whether continuous, incremental, or strategic—based on your startup's specific context and objectives, ensuring it supports both immediate functionality improvements and long-term product evolution.

Navigating the delicate balance between addressing technical debt and introducing new features poses a challenge. One strategy employed by our engineers involves ensuring that when they implement a new feature that interacts with existing code considered technical debt, they also address and rectify that debt. This practice, though it may momentarily postpone the release of the new feature, proves significantly more beneficial in preventing the accumulation of further technical debt within the product.

With start ups, unless it is strategic debt (ie from partners up and down the supply or sales chain) fund with equity. Supply agreements and sale agreements as an example are less onerous that debt that may or may not have juice to pay back on time. Rule of thumb, know your market. Where you fit. Know what your leg up is before you go out on the end of the pier. If you can sell the concept and business plan to angle, VC or other private investors get twice as much as you need. It could be dilutive on the front end but then again it might pay more on the back should you need to go begging.