A long term plan should be not a linear chain of events. But a scenario-tree. You are always at root - the now. Now you gain a new a capabilitz or the world changes around you, and the tree adapts. Its branches thicken were they become more likely. Unlikely scenario branches wither away. The whole structure is recursive, one capability reached makes other capabilities more reachable, but might introduce risks, that shrink the whole tree down.
This scenario tree is not focused on a single product, as a product is just one of many expression of a capability. But when the capability is reached, the whole thing has changed, including your view on risks and rewards while moving on. So pivoting might be in order. Meanwhile others move to similar trees, and change the world around you for the better and the worse.
To compress this structure down into a "historylike" sequence of events, is the main fallacy. The past may be a linear graph, but none the less a ever changing root-recursive-tree was traversed by those moving within it.