  Context: Software start-ups are young companies aiming to build and market
software-intensive products fast with little resources. Aiming to accelerate
time-to-market, start-ups often opt for ad-hoc engineering practices, make
shortcuts in product engineering, and accumulate technical debt. Objective: In
this paper we explore to what extent precedents, dimensions and outcomes
associated with technical debt are prevalent in start-ups. Method: We apply a
case survey method to identify aspects of technical debt and contextual
information characterizing the engineering context in start-ups. Results: By
analyzing responses from 86 start-up cases we found that start-ups accumulate
most technical debt in the testing dimension, despite attempts to automate
testing. Furthermore, we found that start-up team size and experience is a
leading precedent for accumulating technical debt: larger teams face more
challenges in keeping the debt under control. Conclusions: This study
highlights the necessity to monitor levels of technical debt and to
preemptively introduce practices to keep the debt under control. Adding more
people to an already difficult to maintain product could amplify other
precedents, such as resource shortages, communication issues and negatively
affect decisions pertaining to the use of good engineering practices.
