[jlombardi]

Just a little nitpicking, but I'd say one of the top problems facing startups is letting the "super l33t hackers" do the design portion.

Very few start ups bring any significant skill to that end and have atrocious workflows/UIs. You can have the most elegant code in the world that can scale magically to no end but turn off everyone who looks at it.

And that's ignoring the bigger picture - there's a large difference between what one amazing coder thinks would be awesome and what any market is actually interested in. Don't get me wrong, it's very likely the same that can happen to a business superstar too, but if nothing else it's crucial to have people from different perspectives involved in a project. You work to avoid tunnel vision that can completely lead you down the wrong path and waste those months of 50-60 hour weeks.

Also I would be willing to put forward that if you're not doing 50-60 hours worth of non-coding work for a startup, you're probably doing it wrong.