It still wouldn't have worked in the situation the article described, because their initial guess of who their users were was wrong. They posted on a forum, nobody liked it, but one of their users posted on another forum and it took off. TestFlight requires that you specify who the testers are, right?
A lot of the reason the web took off was exactly this kind of serendipity; a dev found an idea to be mildly interesting, posted a rudimentary v1, it's not useful for what the dev thinks it will be, but users (usually not the users the dev anticipated) find it useful for something else.
A lot of the reason the web took off was exactly this kind of serendipity; a dev found an idea to be mildly interesting, posted a rudimentary v1, it's not useful for what the dev thinks it will be, but users (usually not the users the dev anticipated) find it useful for something else.