If it's "arrogant" to think that a startup could be anyone's top choice, then startups would never be able to attract any good talent.

It's not arrogant. It's simply creating a process where you can filter out for folks who are truly excited to build what you're building and believe in the potential future impact. It might also turn out to be a big payday, or not.

Not everyone is simply chasing that 400k TC every year. If you lie about your excitement, a panel of folks who have went through the same process will easily sniff it out.

Some people are better at pretending to be excited than others. Recruiters for example are very good at it. Not all engineers are bad actors.

He did post a disclaimer that their approach wasn't designed to work for every company.

For such a small team, and an early-stage company, I believe it's critical to hire people who are absolutely excited about the mission. They're not simply looking for "an employee," but a partner who believes in what they're doing, coupled with having the ability to help them do it.

new CEO joined Sept 2017, breach was disclosed in Nov 2017

it's more than 1 month, but "months" is a stretch here

Mid-November. Two months is still months, but I can see it leaving an impression of being longer than it was.