More like, the more powerful network effects you have, the less technology matters. Example: eBay.

that too, but what i was trying to get at was "code beauty fetishism" that you often find among, e.g, ruby users.

beautiful code doesn't matter.

Beautiful code has worked for me. In fact, you're using it to make this point.

One reason beautiful code works is that beautiful code roughly equals concise code, and concise code is easier to modify and easier to see bugs in.

Not sure why this guy's getting modded down, because he's right. If "matters" is defined as startup success, then code beauty matters nil. If it's defined as "get people to use your programming language without corporate influence", than it matters a great deal.