Nicholas?

This sounds really familiar. Let me tell you a similar story.

I can think of a commercial Debian derivative that was hideously late in launching because of factors like this. "[A] huge problem with management was moving goalposts and featuritis, because if they didn't have feature X right away they weren't going to be able to close the deal with [hypothetical target market]*."

We went back and forth repeatedly, suffering identity crises over whether we were targeting "the enterprise" (because big, high-margin contracts are where the money is), or "grandma" (because high-volume, low-margin retail sales are where the money is). We slipped horrendously. I don't remember now but I'm pretty sure it was over 6 months.

Ultimately, while the product did finally ship and actually got good reviews, we captured neither market, laid off two-thirds of the staff, and fundamentally changed the business model of the company.

* While our founder was by no means an unknown figure, when one's brother formerly oversaw right-wing death squads in Honduras, one likely commands a degree of attention from, and shares a common language with, officials in third-world countries who can get things done.