[bad_user]

You missed my point - you cannot blame the B-engineers if the founder cannot recognize B-grade work and/or doesn't do anything about it - like firing the B-grade engineers, hiring at least one A-player, fixing it by themselves, etc...

Blame is easy to pass like that, but it seems to me like this startup is bound to die because of a lack of action, more than anything else.

And regarding your opinion, there have been many individuals able to move mountains by themselves when starting out. And there have been many teams of A-players that failed because of irreconcilable differences between them (i.e. too much testosterone, lack of leadership, lack of vision, etc...) - a book I loved reading on this subject is "Dreaming in Code": http://www.dreamingincode.com/