Launch new site all at once or slowly?

What is the best way to launch a new website:

all at once (with a lot of content, images, internal links, etc.) where google will see it and go "woah, a big new website with lots of content"

--or-- to start small, with a core of a few keywords and some 500-1000 word articles to let google catch on, then slowly add content, images and then adding some backlinks?

On one hand I think that building the site non-production would be best since when it goes live, it will look really nice and well laid out. But I have also read that google likes to see ongoing, fresh content, so maybe starting small and building up over the course of several months is best?

I would start with 20-30 pages of good content and add a page per day for the reasons you outlined in the last paragraph.

Yeah, Autumn said it well. What I do is during the first few weeks, I try to get like 20-30 articles up on my site. Then after that, I slow things down a little. Three articles a week or so.

Thanks everyone for the advice!!

Slow and steady. I started a site in november and add about 3000 pages in 1 go every 2 weeks. So far about 10k/12kish indexed.

Getting everything on your website before launching it, is certainly not possible... And, there is no harm in launching a website step by step... In fact, if you upload your content slowly... This will maintain your good rankings in SERP results.

Always make slow backlinks on new sites , else google will kick your ass and sandbox your sites