The environment does indeed matter. With startups, the short term is critical: if you don't grow fast enough, there will be NO "3 years from now" to fix. A big

The environment does indeed matter. With startups, the short term is critical: if you don't grow fast enough, there will be NO "3 years from now" to fix. A big bank will care about glitches 3 years from now. I'm not sure what you mean in the middle paragraph, per "stack of use cases to design against". You mean getting it done "now" overrides problems 3 years from now? Your org making that trade-off is fine as long as it's clear to everyone and perhaps documented.