I'm a long term native developer who's been doing react native contacting for the past 6 months. One big issue that you run into is if you need to do long running background tasks (network polling, bluetooth, music, etc) you basically need to write native code to handle it. Complex animations and non standard view's aren't that bad to implement.

Just about to implement react native app with network polling. Do you have any links/tips to share re best practices?

If you are just doing polling when your app is in the foreground, you should not have to write any native code. All of the polling can be handled in your actions.

If you need to poll in the background when the phones screen is locked, then you will need to write native code. Writing native code to do this isn't that hard (react native docs are good), it's just annoying that you will have duplicate business logic for Android/iOS.

Fair enough (pun intended). But for the majority of startups, I'd still wager they don't need those premature 'wow' effects.

I would argue that in some cases (certainly not all), a little bit of strategically placed "wow" may be vital for some startups to grow - small things that make users love a product and show others. The vast majority of users will not sympathize with the reasons a developer would choose to use something like a web view in a native app.

I was going to focus on ReactNative my the more I read about the more I realized I am better off native, at least for now. Exactly because I do a lot of animations and I am all about interaction. If your product looks bad or "dated" it's not going to connect with users, not in the aread I am focusing on. If your product is about that extra pop, then I think Native might be best.