Replace "iterate" with "kept working on and improving" and your comment makes just as much sense: any company, old or new, evolves and tries out new things and

Replace "iterate" with "kept working on and improving" and your comment makes just as much sense: any company, old or new, evolves and tries out new things and abandons other things that don't work — in that sense, saying iteration is crucial to startups is pretty much just a tautology. I think PG was hinting at the fact that for startups, iterating often means pivoting, so your first iteration doesn't necessarily lock you into path dependency. Which is a lesson that doesn't really apply to Facebook or Dropbox or Google, because they got the general direction right the first time.