This is very true. Perhaps, though, startups in their early stages should hire people with low GPAs, but who have some other proof of intelligence? If I want to really innovate, I'm going to hire people who not only think outside the box, but abhor going anywhere near it. 'course, these are the people that don't stay on as the company transitions from R&D to sales and maintenance.
In my (limited) experience, running an early stage startup is less about innovation and more about drive to get things done. Then again, I work with people who are good at what they do and fully invested in the project. Nobody is getting a salary (and probably won't for at least a year), so that tends to weed out the mediocre players.
We're early phase, and I realized recently that if I could hire any developer that I've worked with in the past that all of my top 3 (one of whom we recently hired) were college drop outs, and in general, I'd actually bias my decisions slightly towards those who had completed degrees. This surprised me a little.
