Systems take too long to get to market, which causes
    marketing efforts to stall or become irrelevant, and
    competitors beat out the startup to an offering.

I disagree. Well, maybe I agree in part, but I feel like this misses the forest for the trees. Getting to market fast helps you get in front of users (and prospective users) faster, which—assuming you're listening to them and iterating—helps you achieve product/market fit before you run out of capital or a competitor does the same.

Wikipedia has a bunch of great links to more on the topic if you're unfamiliar with it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product/market_fit