Maybe once you get to that stage it doesn't really matter. Maybe if you're going for a billion dollar earth shaking idea, it doesn't really matter.

However, I've worked for a small company for quite a while now. We've had several successful projects and several failures.

In my experience, technical debt taken too early can easily double the time it takes you to find out if a project is a dud. That matters to us.

My general rule is: push off technical debt as late as you can. Aways leave code slightly better than you found it. Fix problems as you recognize them.

I think a big mistake developers make is thinking "make code better" should be on some roadmap. You should be making code better every time you touch it. Nothing about writing a new feature says that you have to integrate it in the sloppiest way possible.