npm start fails on osx mavericks and node version 6.40.

[calirails]

I've cloned this as a starter kit. I was able to run npm install without error but running npm start, resulted int this error that I can't quite figure out what to do with logged output.
calvin@~/Documents/Safezone/Projects/fb-react/react-starter-kit$ npm start

essential-react@0.5.0 start /Users/calvin/Documents/Safezone/Projects/fb-react/react-starter-kit
node server.js

/Users/calvin/Documents/Safezone/Projects/fb-react/react-starter-kit/server.js:1
(function (exports, require, module, __filename, __dirname) { import express from 'express';
^^^^^^
SyntaxError: Unexpected token import
at Object.exports.runInThisContext (vm.js:76:16)
at Module._compile (module.js:528:28)
at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:565:10)
at Module.load (module.js:473:32)
at tryModuleLoad (module.js:432:12)
at Function.Module._load (module.js:424:3)
at Module.runMain (module.js:590:10)
at run (bootstrap_node.js:394:7)
at startup (bootstrap_node.js:149:9)
at bootstrap_node.js:509:3

npm ERR! Darwin 15.6.0
npm ERR! argv "/usr/local/Cellar/node/6.4.0/bin/node" "/usr/local/bin/npm" "start"
npm ERR! node v6.4.0
npm ERR! npm v3.10.3
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! essential-react@0.5.0 start: node server.js
npm ERR! Exit status 1

[ojame]

Do you have the .babelrc file in the root of your directory?