I agree with the author, but not for the same reason they mentioned. Currently, the biggest problem in mobile is discovery. If you're not in the top 25 for your category, its difficult to gain enough organic traffic to build a sustainable business on. Companies much larger than you are buying out all the paid inventory. As a startup, you'll be doubly hurt because no one will know who you are. So you have all the problems of sustaining as a brand on the web plus the added disadvantage of surviving on a platform where discovery is inherently broken.

So unless you think long and hard about how to solve distribution and come up with some interesting hacks, you're at a large disadvantage from day 0.