I recently read "short-term delivery is prioritized over long-term maintainability". In my head I translated to "cashflow is prioritized over optionality".

That's the decision from an investor perspective. We programmers experience it as "I have to wade through moist garbage forever & you don't care", but it's really a business decision. They're paying you money so they don't have to care.

That said, it's possible to get the business decision wrong, even fatally wrong, either direction. A balance that is maximizes the chance for survival when a product is new may lead to sclerosis when it is mature.