Thanks hello_moto. I wasn't being sarcastic -- I mean what I said earnestly.
Put another way: find developers who want to work for you because they want to build what you want to build, not ones who will only work for you because you chose "technology X" to build it. One way to guarantee that is to choose a tech that you're positive can do the job and is boring... Java is that tech.
find developers who want to work for you because they want to build what you want to build, not ones who will only work for you because you chose "technology X" to build it
Some people will be perfectly content to build anything just as long as it’s written in <their choice obscure language>. For other people it might be really important that you use agile, or that they are given a greater level of control over the development process, or that they can work from home, or whatever it is that they care about.
So really I’m saying is that you should generalize your advice here: find people who care about what you care about. Don’t try to guess what that is. And to do that, go away and figure out what exactly you care about, ask other people to do the same and compare notes.
Some of the Java startups look more solid than the rest. Zimbra, SpringPad, LinkedIN.