Maaaan.<p>This says absolutely nothing, except for the ever-present "just start-up, it doesn't matter." It doesn't matter only if you're a Blub programmer (see <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html</a> though I imagine most people have already seen it), or if you're a non-technical manager needing to convince himself that it doesn't matter.<p>So here is some real advice: if you are doing a typical "mostly-web-but-a-lot-of-little-elses" choose Python. Python has good frameworks like Django (that will bring up you to speed clearly for a CRUD-based web site) and Twisted (for the small "everything elses"). If you find performance bottlenecks, well, the C-API is not a "pleasure" to work with, but it's reasonable at least. It is easy to learn, so the whole "find an engineer familiar with it" is a bit of a red herring.<p>Sure, this advice will not fit all start-ups, but if you think it doesn't apply to yours, you better have fairly solid arguments.<p>(Some arguments that I think are solid: "We already know Ruby well, and the difference is small enough that this tips the scales", "we need to write in Davlik for Android". "But I know C++" isn't, for example.)