It would be instructional to understand what the actual difference in cold startup times are between Chrome and Firefox on your machine. Would you take some wall-clock measurements of cold startup and post a comparison for the HN community (and FF developers)? Chrome uses tricks that create the perception of speed; please measure how long it takes for the browser to be "usable", which is defined by when you start typing in the address bar and auto-complete results appear.

Just a prediction, but you will realize that the difference in startup performance is but a perception.

Thanks!