In the startup world, time is primarily viewed as a hurdle to be removed — everything needs to be instant and real-time. This is certainly valuable as a general principle, and it can even be critical to the defensibility of certain types of startups, i.e. data networks. However, blindly applying this principle in all situations can be dangerous. Time-delayed behavior can sometimes be a requirement to gain critical mass, in particular for interaction networks — ones that connect specific users to enable interactions, e.g. social networks.
