By using Python they were able to ship, which is why you have heard of Reddit and they were able to grow enough to have a concurrency problem (something Python still sucks at); the number of sites of any significance that started by using Java for page delivery is probably somewhere around 0.
True, but would they be able to ship within the window they could become relevant? Would they be able to add the required features?
You can ship your own clone of Reddit next week, with blazingly fast code, running on two tiny VMs and supporting more load than Reddit, but would it be successful?