I will be speaking in terms of Elastic price. As someone said "people are more willing to pay for expectations", than for a ready product, because it gives an opportunity for future profits.
If we release a fully ready product, the initial price will be very high, which is, of course, very good for early donators, but is it good for newcomers?

So cons releasing just a Lite client at the moment:
- low price at the beginning (but constantly rising when new features are coming); //"Waves" is a good example. They had only a LiteClient for a ~year, so the price fell almost x2 times below ICO once. Now, when they released token creation, decentralized exchange, Leased PoS, - features expected as an MVP - the price rose x2,5 times the ICO.

Pros:
- good chance to come in for new investors, developers, exchanges; //This is important. If a big exchange like Poloniex will have a chance to buy a stake early for a low price, Elastic will be listed on it for sure
- great trade volume // This will also attract big exchanges
- ability to create a foundation and attract more devs, bug hunters (like HunterMinerCrafter).

Releasing an MVP will give a higher price and won't be so attractive for newcomers as releasing a LiteClient, IMO.