Curious on your perspective why professionalism and good work habits beat "genius" at startups.
I would have assumed the opposite. My view of startup life was that it's about managing your money, your hiring/firing, your sales, and what you focus on.
That's about good prioritization and productivity per minute.
Assuming the good faith of the poster, he or she may have worked with (a) real genius several times, or (b) with several real geniuses.
(a) is more probable. Sustainable business start-up success of the non-banal order requires high general intelligence. It does exist. But 9 times out of 10 hard work and people skills will win.
Perceived genius (or more appropriately, assumed genius) would be more accurate.
The people who are the least scrupulous, most creative, and technically competent are very successful. Startups aren't usually successful because of sweat hard work, but realizing a combination of opportunity and reach, rather than contracting as much software development labor as possible.
In every successful startup I worked at (3 of 20ish), I observed the opposite.