As mentioned redundancy is important but you can accomplish plenty with just one developer to start, think ruby, python, ruby on rails, javascript, etc.. Based on my gut feeling I answered yes although this sort compensation seem to be rarely practical. It's a simple poll to a sophisticated problem. What if you can only afford to pay for 2 developers ? Or you can afford 3x the pay but the developer can really perform the task of 10 developers ? Moreover there are other variables that are not easily quantifiable in a pay check but may be important to the developer like the company's culture and reputation.