Technical Debt & ArchitectureNovember 24, 20253 min read
The Database Decisions That Come Back to Haunt an Exit
Data model choices made in the first year are the hardest thing to change in the tenth, and buyers know it.
Application code can be replaced incrementally. Data models cannot, because every consumer, report, and integration depends on their shape. This asymmetry is why reviewers spend disproportionate time there.
The choices that age badly
- Multi-tenancy bolted on after the first enterprise customer
- Money, dates, and identifiers stored without consistent types
- Soft deletes without a retention or restoration policy
- Reporting queries running against the transactional store
None of these prevent a sale. All of them appear in the buyer's first-year plan as work that must precede anything else.
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