It is always about hiring the best fit candidates, but to me that does mean balancing the team. Which for engineering usually means intentionally seeking out qualified female candidates early on. This balances the team out greatly in my opinion. Honestly from my experience, it stops some typical male BS that we are all guilty of at one time or another.<p>BTW -- same thing goes for other roles, say customer service (or HR) where it can sometimes be dominated by women, I think hiring men into some of those positions provides balance.<p>As for race/ethnic background that to me is really nothing that needs to be done with Technology, as I always seem to see a pretty diverse group of people. Although if I ever saw a team (after say 1-2 years or 6 months post funding) too lopsided it would be a warning indicator to me. And the warning would be not a human diversity warning but an intellectual diversity warning, so I would want to ask questions around that angle. As to me, too many like minds usually bring too many of the same ideas which might reenforce each other in a bad direction, without intention. Plus we are global in everything we do now so having that represented in the team seems almost mandatory.
You should hire the best candidates possible. I would never consider the issue unless my workforce represented a significant portion of the community. In my opinion if a startup has to waste resources thinking about anything but hiring the best it will fail.