Sounds like ad-hoc lack of product/program/project management, a lack of setting customer boundaries, and manager/team lead backing you up. Also, startups do involve and sometimes need the flexibility to experiment, so not all effort will be used in the final thing. Plus, be aware not to keep it clean and proper because deferring crap too long leads to culture of tech debt that never goes away, it just gets worse geometrically and slows everything down until it's a singularly consuming 100% of bandwidth... and then so much for "worry about it later".