The accumulated cost of shortcuts and suboptimal implementation decisions that slow future development.
Technical debt is unavoidable in early-stage startups where speed matters more than elegance. The risk is when debt compounds — rushed code begets more rushed code, and refactoring costs grow exponentially. AI coding assistants like Cursor can both accelerate debt accumulation (by generating code faster than it can be reviewed) and help reduce it (by systematically refactoring and adding tests to existing codebases).
It's no longer a debate. Here is the technical breakdown of why YC founders abandoned Copilot for Cursor, and why you should too.
You don't need to learn Python. You need to learn Cursor. How non-technical founders are building complex SaaS MVPs without hiring an engineering team.
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