A great success by the threes team for sure.

But I have to wonder what if that final version had been banged out in the first weekend, would it have been recognized as the winner? Would a team then stop innovating and switch to build it (and saved 1.2 years for who knows what else)?

From a product dev standpoint i'm torn. There's a lot to be learned through iterating through complexities, challenging everything and ending with a simpler solution. But there's plenty to be lost by the argyle distractions as well.

HN, how do you do know when to stop brainstorming and ship?