I was a PhD student at a newly started research institute (started about two years before I joined). I really liked the place. The number one question is how t

I was a PhD student at a newly started research institute (started about two years before I joined). I really liked the place. The number one question is how to motivate people to join. For us PhD students, the motivation was 1) a salary and 2) top notch professors. For the professors the motivation was access to infrastructure and a pretty substantial research budget. There was no prestige since it was an all new institution. Every professor that joined got a budget big enough to cover their own salary for five years, the salary of two or three PhD students, all the lab equipment they needed, etc. And of course they also got access to shared resources, like meeting rooms, microscopy lab, etc. So if you can't offer a big budget to attract a professor/principal investigator, I'm not sure who would join?