Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch has a great post on succeeding with a startup.

This arose out of a traffic-generating dispute between Duncan Riley and Jason Calacanis over (would-you-believe) work/life balance. Robert Scoble also weighted in against the Aussie showing how you can lift your web visitor numbers by squabbling amongst each other.

You must hire the right people. In particular, the early employees must be perfect. This is more important than anything else, including the product or business idea. Perfect teams can adapt to failing products or market/competitive issues and correct for that. That’s why great teams tend to work together over and over again, and sometimes start companies even before they know what the product will be.

He should know. His TechCrunch network is one of the more successful internet startups in recent years.

We should all pay attention to his message.