My strategy was to target a well-defined niche and dominate it rather than trying to compete in a saturated category (like games or entertainment). I think overall polish is extremely important. You can't just release an MVP and iterate like you can on the web. You really have to hit a homerun from the get go or you have no chance of survival.

This is good advice. It's important to make a big initial splash. It's a mistake to put out something half-baked with the idea of polishing it later, unlike the web.