Proving your concept by rolling out slowly

This author's title is misleading. Getting a product out there quickly is still the most important, the author just advocates testing the concept amongst a geographic region to see if the business will work instead of trying to tackle every market. This already occurs with most companies because we release in the US, and not Munich.

The examples from other industries don't necessarily apply because a lot of the startups are consumer-facing, but even so, limiting yourself to a target market (e.g. political people) may miss the unintended market (e.g. eduators), so just getting the thing out there helps you figure out who else wants your product.

The more important question is whether you have released with the minimal feature set that will test your questions about the product.