Some counterpoints to this:

"No matter how good your hires are, if you defined the wrong position, you will end up hiring people who can’t add value to your company and can’t increase your chances of success."

-> counterpoint: hire great people, regardless of position.

"First off, don’t interview if you’re not willing to put in a tremendous amount of time designing the interview, meeting with the candidates and analyzing the results."

-> counterpoint: YC decides yes or no after a very short interview.

One of the founders at the startup I work with recently shared this quote with the team:

"Effective teams have diverse personalities essential for balanced decision-making, but still share core values." -- James Coulter

I like this quote, thanks for sharing!

Great post and great advice. Being selective about candidates is a fine line, though--everyone falls short on some index of ability. Good hiring is about finding people who are good on most indices and then cultivating the others.

Glad you enjoyed it. It's true, and I'd also add it's about deciding what is easiest to cultivate.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw

And to relate this to another quote by Natalie Clifford Barney, I'd say that progress depends on the trouble-making individual.