Agreed. I also chose Grails for my startup 3 years ago, and have been very happy with decision. Allowed us to deliver a huge amount of functionality quickly. And Grails 2.0 has been out for six months, that's been great. 2.1 has some nice things in it (about to come out imminently), and I think they are going to try to get Groovy 2.0 into Grails in 2.2, which will be awesome!