> Since "Best" is a vague loaded term it's more accurate to understand the problem that you're trying to solve.
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> If you are creating a new web-standard or industry shifting technology then you absolutely need the best.
There's a tension between these two sentences which is worth more consideration about what “best” really means and how it intersects with scalability.
If you're working on a web standard, “best” tends to mean things like “experienced”, “works well with others”, and “broad and deep understanding of what the users do”.
If you're working on a major new technology, it might be more likely that you really need someone who is incredibly good at a particular hard skill but it's still likely that if you have a problem in that class it will exceed any individual's capacity and the limiting factors will continue to be coordination between people, ability to maintain clean separation of responsibilities, etc.
Think about something like LLVM – there's a ton of really hard work in compilers and optimization, it's had a significant impact in multiple parts of the industry, and while there are some people who rightly deserve a great deal of respect for work on those hard problems, a key part of the success which hasn't been virtuoso work at that level but rather keeping a design which is clean and extensible enough for so many different organizations to use and contribute to.