I drew some quick placeholder art for a game I'm working on for fun. One day I might sit down and draw some good art, but not today. When the day finally comes to finish the art, the difficulty of creating that art will be no greater than it is now. In fact, with improving art tools, it may be easier to do later.
On the other hand, if I'm not quite happy with my database scheme and I want to change it, I can spend a day on it now, or I can spend--based on my experience--months on it in the future. In fact, there's a good chance if I don't fix the database schema now, it will never be done.
But aren't unit tests the half-assed solution? They are a wonderful help if you want to deliver something fast, but if you had more time you'd probably do something else.
Going to mule that over.
Or, in this case, half your asspower.
I think the asspower unit of effort makes more sense than story points.
Meaning that e.g. if you really need a ride, then a noisy, beat up old car will do.
EDIT: Totally agree about the 'important mindest for startup', I had a similar eye-opening experience, working in a startup with 'cowboy' code that was actually quite good, but I had to unlearn a bit of stuff I read as a junior/mid-level developper.
It was code that was well-architected, had well-concieved data structure, and had business value, but every "professional" coder would deem bad-quality, since it had no unit test, did some stuff unconventionally, and probably would have many linter warning.