One of my fears is that the first impression is so important. It's very hard to make people try your product for a second time. Reviews get written and it's not like people are gonna update their reviews when all the issues have been fixed.
It's also kind of hard to get meaningful feedback without some kind of big PR push.
As product becomes more mature, increase size until you have a 1.0, at which point you have a loyal fan base that loves the product and is willing to pay. Then you go full PR, market like crazy and burn VC money in growth.
The point is at each stage you are still validating and gathering feedback without the risk of losing out on a large number of customers.
In my experience, you can get meaningful feedback by watching one, or ten, or a hundred users use your app. Indeed, given the level of tailoring that you can (and should) do to pick the first batch of users, you should be able to give them very close attention
If you don't have evangelists in your early-alpha userbase, then something is probably wrong.
If the first, yeah, dude, you are basically toast. If the second, you may be able to rise from the dead again. It just may take a while.
But, mostly, money.
If money is the #1 motivating factor you'll create the company mirroring your goals. Doesn't mean you won't be successful - one of the companies I didn't mention was eventually sold for hundreds of millions (but that was down from billions of projected value earlier after they screwed up due to what I mentioned) - but you can increase your chances of success if your actual product is actually important to you, and if it solves an actual problem.
If you compare that with web, as many pointed out my article had a lot of spelling errors but that was easily corrected.
The real challenge is testing your assumptions without ever releasing an app or website :)
Question is: should a user come by your MVP now or in six months when it's "done"? The earlier people see your product and not like it, the earlier you can hone it for future users. Plus, a final version could be rebranded if the MVP was that bad.
Granted, I fell into this trap with my website. I kept putting it's release off and now am learning how to refine it as I see how it's used by others.
For instance, I thought the news section of my site (http://www.survivalscout.com/news) would be really popular but almost no one visits it. It's my favorite part but I seem to be in the minority according to the logs. If I had known that earlier, I may have spent less time making it.
Even after you have a mature product, you can trickle out new features this way. Sometimes customers will come to you a feature request and even ask to help you beta test it, because they want it so badly.
There is a solution: stop showing people your product and start casually asking them about their problems. Then you can begin to understand if you are solving real problems and how much people care about them, e.g. if they have already parted with money (or time) trying to solve them. Don't ask leading questions, but do prompt them for specific details about their actions. Don't ask anything where the answer is to any degree hypothetical. It only takes five minutes, just don't mention your product!
Of course this requires you to be in the same room as your potential evangelist early-adopter customers. Go put yourself in that room ASAP.