Being first DOES mean you are doomedd to fail. Historically no first mover product has ever made it to the mature stage of a market sector. This is because technology always improves on any prototype ...and to do so the prototype gets worked on and improved. For this not to be the technology would stop dead in its tracks and it would be the Black Swan to end all Black Swans. You would have to start living in a world that would be similar to the religious "utopias" such as the Amish have.

TCP/IP is not one product but a suite of protocols that are considered to be "standards" that is continually being added to ....even today crypto products are being added to the list of standards that compose the TCP/IP suite, Syntropy (NOIA) being the most famous.