In construction, or most other fields of "traditional" engineering, projects will take years from start to finish. That's completely normal. In the world of so

In construction, or most other fields of "traditional" engineering, projects will take years from start to finish. That's completely normal. In the world of software - especially for startups - it is completely unacceptable to spend 5 years on building a MVP. There are some protected sectors where things move slower (defense, aerospace, for example), but if you're in the consumer field, you just can't spend too much time. You want to push out a MVP as soon as possible, and build on that. And most software companies do not get penalized on shipping buggy software. Big game studios ship broken games, and spend a couple of years patching them up to their final form. People bitch and moan, but still throw money at 'em. If you don't want bloated, broken, slow, and unreliable software - use your pocketbook.