ftravis

Good catch, I haven't coded perl since 1999. This might be more appropriate for the kind of background we want:

  "YC startup looking for rockstar designer".gsub("rockstar","talented")

Or maybe:

  "YC startup looking for rockstar designer".replace("rockstar","talented") 

for the pythonistas.

I think you're confounding "nobody is doing what we're doing" with "nobody is competing with us". You're right to say that no competitors sometimes means no market. On the other hand, it's only wise to enter markets where you have some important differentiating factor between your product and the competition.

Look at it this way: Google had lots of competitors, but nobody was doing what they were doing.

Can he play drums? I'm ok at guitar and my partner can sing, but we're really looking to balance out the team.

To me, rockstar meant "talented far beyond the norm".

There are lots of articles about what differentiates extremely talented coders from the rest, and taking the intersection of their conclusions paints a relatively fair picture of who we're hoping to have join us. No miracle workers or ego trippers, just somebody who's skilled, hardworking, and nice.

Based on the comments here, it looks like we committed a faux pas by using the word rockstar. Sorry about that. We didn't anticipate getting a negative reaction to the word. I had always conceptualized rockstar as a compliment to someone's skills, and I hadn't seen enough job ads to know that it was becoming uncool.

s/rockstar/talented

I think I would nearly die of surprise if someone was doing what we are doing now. Then, I'd take them out for a beer.

the same YC startup is also looking for rockstar python / rails coders :) ftravis1@gmail.com