I have worked in many companies. Most of all reached a big success in their field. Some times I found the code was written by owner or co-owner or the first developer of this company. It was strange from architectural point of view code or awful code styled, or hardcoded and so on. I know a couple of startups, that were grown up and were started from the "one night" code. Is it only way to get success to write code in this way?

Why does a code written "on knee" but in time is better than delayed well thought-out one? What about future? Which way is the best: to write a good architecture, code and spend some more time at the startup or to write "fast" and hardcoded one that would be completely (partially) throw out (or maybe wouldn't) after some period of time (or never)?