If your startup is dependent on solving chicken and egg marketing problems the choice of Lisp vs. something else is fairly irrelevant as you said. This is the case in most startups that take a traditional business (e.g. Taxi) and modernise it (e.g. uber). The level of tech required to do that is not going to be cutting edge. It is quite rote to solve these things in RoR or PHP.<p>On the other hand there may be some startups where the choice of language really matters. One thing I can think of is how a lot of Enterprise software is a big feature fest with massive complicatedness coming from a mixture of the real-world muckiness of the problem, and poor architectural choices. Such shops require armies of programmers to maintain their bloated wares. Maybe a startup with a much more thoughtful approach, using a Lisp&#x2F;Haskell&#x2F;etc. type language and a small number of developers can have a big competitive advantage.<p>Customer &quot;we need a new feature&quot;. Startup &quot;sure we&#x27;ll add a rule and you&#x27;ll have that tomorrow&quot;. Old business &quot;that will take 3 months and cost $1m&quot;