The way to do it is fairly simple: make your initial product simple. Focus on the direct problem at hand, and ignore the rest. Create a limited-feature set, but fairly solid product. Then in your updates you can add the new features. The side-effect of this is you make your customers happy. They bought your product for the functions it did do, and now you’re adding more value to their purchase.

And, you’ve given them a good product and it came out quickly.

- Steve

Some products are more seamless and easy to push updates to. I tend to side with faster-to-market by ways of quick iteration software development that can be bundled up and released to testing at any point in the product’s lifecycle. This process also lends itself to easier product maintenance in the long term and thus higher quality software/product in the long term as well.

Sometimes the first-mover advantages gives a company a big enough head start that it becomes dominant & difficult to beat, even if its product is inferior.

In other cases (e.g. life-critical medical devices) I think it’s pretty obvious what factor dominates.

Some companies focus initially on time-to-market, get an advantage, and then backfill/improve their product line.

Of course, most of us in product development can relate to management that says, “Yes!” (Put another way: “I want both!”)