Technical Debt

The accumulated cost of shortcuts, quick fixes, and suboptimal decisions made in building a product, work that will eventually need to be redone properly.

Technical debt compounds. Moving fast early creates shortcuts that slow you down later. Understanding it helps founders make informed build-vs-refactor decisions.

You launch your MVP by hard-coding prices directly in the app instead of building a proper pricing system. 6 months later, changing a price requires a developer and 3 hours of work. That is technical debt.