I'd like to (slightly) challenge #8: it seems to me that Dropbox is a counterexample. The Dropbox guys took quite a long time and their first release was quite polished. Not perfect, certainly, but way, way ahead of just minimally functional.
I think that's in no small part due to the problem Dropbox solves. Don't forget this problem has been "solved" about a gazillion times before, but the lack of polish made those "solutions" unusable in practice.
