supplemental results in Google for the brains behind new york

I have been reading up on supplemental results in Google and what this might mean for your web site, and according to Matt Cuts over at Google this is not a result of any penalty but rather a reflection on the pagerank of the site itself. So if pagerank is a result of backlinks then will all sites immediately go into supplemental results when they start off? Apparently the only way out of supplemental results is high-quality links to the site. This will push back the design of the site even further while I try and dig my way out of supplemental results by getting links and putting additional content onto the site.