That's some good nuance, thanks for adding your insight here. It definitely sounds like you've taken on some tech debt by not writing tests, but you've done so intentionally to keep the company afloat as a startup. That's understandable.

Martin Fowler's tech debt quadrant would probably put your case in the top-right quadrant: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebtQuadrant.html