I think the takeaway is "a year." Businesses typically don't have a year to fix something like this, so saying something will take a year usually means, "It's impossible."

Totally, but this is a full greenfield project. It's a pretty unusual situation to be in.

It definitely a first for me.

You deliberately omitted the word "prototype" from the quote. They didn't spend a year iterating in production. The prototype is the one you plan to throw away.