So... one of the places I work is one of those 'nimble little startups', and it gets more and more bogged-down by the day due to some poor technical decisions t

So... one of the places I work is one of those 'nimble little startups', and it gets more and more bogged-down by the day due to some poor technical decisions taken early. There are seven different kinds of timestamp in the database, for example. That's pure dev overhead that gets applied for everything. And because the nimble little startups are pressed to work on new features rather than refactoring, more tech debt just gets added to the pile... Also, don't forget selection bias - most small companies, startups included, die in the first few years. Only the success stories make the papers.