Regarding the part about native apps, would you go as far as even restraining from publishing any app, if native app developers are not available (or not in the budget) in the beginning?
There are many benefits to native apps from the experience polish to the community and resources surrounding them. There are 2 major negatives to native: dev time and cost.
The Native vs Cordova/SomethingElse discussion is going to have different answers depending on your use case. Let me restate that for importance. Your use case will dictate which is "correct" early on.
For us, the rapid product tests we were looking to run, in both web and mobile platforms with a very small engineering team all but required a cordova app. As our product has grown more mature, and major client features change less frequent, the appeal of native has grown. But despite that appeal, we remain firmly in cordova and will for at least another 6 months.
Not all products need to invest in amazing apps or apps at all, but if you don't have a decent app than ASO and featuring are not going to be available to you. This may or may not be important to your business.