Strong disagree. Deno could have been a cheaply run open source project with corporate sponsors and could have pursued the slow and steady approach. There's no reason to feel pressure from competitors unless you want to if you're forging a genuinely new path. "Clean break from Node" was the differentiator. Once they abandoned that the reason for using it went away.
The moment they took on VC funding they had to care about competitors and also had to move away from the framework to things like Deno Deploy in pursuit of money.
The moment they took on VC funding they had to care about competitors and also had to move away from the framework to things like Deno Deploy in pursuit of money.