Probably feature development slowed to a crawl over a few years. Code debt isn't actually an abstract thing, it's just hard to explain to non-coders the thousand little slowdowns it injects into every project.
What I meant was the founder got what he asked for. Short term gain at the expense of sustainability. It is a feature rather than a bug. For a company looking for product market fit, "good code" might take a back seat. Andy Grove mentioned that an executive job is to, paraphrased, maintain the company culture. His context was about larger established companies. But I think the point still holds. It is the founder's job to sell his vision to his employees. It is the market's job to determine whether such vision thrives.
This is blatant conservatism, and it's a mentality which leads to dead players. The job of an executive is to make good decisions; it's in the name: execut-ive. To decide always in the direction of the existent culture is a very peculiar bias which is only successful in certain situations.
A friend calls it the Logjam Principle. There are always a few logs floating down the river and that's not really a problem. But a small logjam of just a few logs will grow over time until the entire river is obstructed. It's better not to let things get to that state.