We don't require surgeons or airline pilots or bridge-designing civil engineers to be rock stars. Exactly why do people think you need a rock star programmer to build, I dunno, eBay for cats or whatever is the latest stupid VC fashion?
Lot of startups are just looking for superstar programmers because they want to get the most out of their limited funding.
But without proper product-market fit its even counter productive. Superstar programmer is like a sports car, he/she will take you 10x faster in the wrong direction if your direction is wrong.
Even if you only run eBay for cats, you probably secretly believe you can become the equivalent of Facebook in your particular space, and feel that what you need is a room full of the eBay for cats version of Mark Zuckerberg, making the billion dollar magic happen on the cheap.