The project is open source. "Ned and company" may end up having little to do with Steem success in the long run.
@dan is a smart guy but he can't just BEEP BOOP BOOP click click and have a fully functional blogging platform deployed on EOS. Development is time consuming. It's not magic although it certainly feels like it sometimes because the tech is so complex.
Also, do you really think @dan is going to put competing with Steemit at the top of his priorities list when there are literally a million other things he could be doing?
Like you said about Steem, EOS is open source, so Dan may not have anything to do with the next big decentralized anything platform, only time will tell. EOS does have the popularity though, and is giving away tons of money to incentivize folks to build for it though.