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Desperation might build motivation, but it will also ensure short-term thinking (needing to pay one's bills and feed one's family tends to do that). The most successful companies adopt a longer view, and this might be far easier without the immediacy of insolvency looming.

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Getting from zero to paying one's living expenses is probably the most difficult growth phase of any start-up. In my personal experience, this phase is best funded by technical debt. I suspect this is an unpopular opinion because cleaning up technical debt is no fun. None-the-less, I've seen it over and over -- a quasi-technical founder knows someone willing pay for XYZ, then that person makes it just well enough to work. A company is born, the rent gets paid, and perhaps an acquiring company cleans-up the tech stack.

I agree that it's the most difficult growth phase. "Funded by technical debt" is an interesting way to say about building something quickly and well enough to work. Loved it.

HostiFi was for sure funded by technical debt. I hacked the MVP together on WordPress plugins and Python scripts. That got us to over $1M in ARR then we spent about $100K to rewrite the entire thing and migrate to Laravel PHP and (better) Python scripts.

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