alt Hacker NewsHunger and drive can definitely lead to unexpected initially results; they cannot replace relevant experience, but if somebody has at least done something similar, it's often worth making a bet on them!
There also is an interesting paradox in experience and motivation; often the most experienced and best people on paper are unfortunately the least motivated, least hungry - burn out and boredom do their part.
I've often heard the idea that you can always teach someone how to code, but you can't teach them to want to be great at it.
At the same time, I think there's a limit to how great someone can get even with a lot of experience. We see that with sports, there's probably a similar limit to cognitive activities too.
You can probably get the average, already smart person, to be a pretty good 8/10 on just about anything, be that music, math, writing, coding. But there are levels beyond that may require natural wiring that most of us just aren't born with. An extreme example of course, but there's no amount of experience I can acquire to get to a von Neumann level of genius, but fortunately we don't need that to build business web apps.