It is NOT worth hiring a few average people just for one brilliant person. First of all "brilliant" person is overrated, unless we're talking about hiring someone at a CTO level. One could be brilliant yet a perfect disaster for the company if he doesn't fit in, not to mention many other factors. Also you seem to think mediocre employees don't hurt the company but mediocre people hire/attract less than mediocre people, who in turn hires/attracts people even worse, and so on. As a startup you don't have that luxury. And the company culture goes to shit. I would never make that decision. I've had both cases, one of the employees was a brilliant guy but was lazy, and he fucked up the company culture by acting as a "role model". Soon everyone in the company started acting like him. I've also hired someone who didn't really fit in and was passive aggressive, and it was hard to communicate with him. Thinking back it wasn't because he was not talented, but because he just didn't care much (This is equivalent to having a mediocre employee). Because of this the entire team had hard time making decisions. When your team is small even one person can influence the culture in negative ways.