Did you also consider Java or any JVM-based language?<p>Modern Java is a lot less verbose than it used to be and it knows a lot of tricks (e.g. akka, play framework, dropwizard, Rx, dependency management, good IDEs, advanced profiling and instrumentation etc.)<p>Netflix is an excellent example of how you can leverage the JVM to build one of the most advanced system architectures hosted on AWS.
We've been using Go for our startup as well and love it. Having programmed in a variety of languages, including Java, Scala, and Python, I have to say that Go has been as easy to work with if not easier than my previous experiences with other languages. Particularly awesome is the tooling they've built around the language. Dependency management is a cakewalk compared to other systems (say goodbye to Spring/Maven/etc. headaches) and compile time is extremely fast. Plus you get all the benefits of static type checking without much verbosity.
What on earth were you comparing with to come up with go as having stricter code checking?<p>I'd say early stage startups are probably the least likely place for go to be a good choice - it sacrifices a lot for the sake of performance, which only matters once you've made it. As they say, scaling is a nice problem to have.<p>(Edit: and like Java it makes other sacrifices in the interests of being maintainable by less talented engineers. Again, that's something big companies need, not early stage startups)