[koolmoe]

I don't have any experience in a startup, but just thinking on the problem leads me to believe that not releasing early would be a big contributor.

Seems to me that if you release early, you'll get more interesting[1] feedback while your app is in a nascent stage and you can more easily change direction.

[1] By interesting, I'm mean that the feedback on a more fully developed release is more likely to be of the window-dressing, change-this-font-to-helvetica-16 type, while feedback for the early release will often be directed at adding desirable features.