I think to be one of the principle developers at a start-up, you need to do better than feeling like your "skills are lesser than a huge community of people wor

I think to be one of the principle developers at a start-up, you need to do better than feeling like your "skills are lesser than a huge community of people working together". IMHO, the two/three primary developers at a start-up should be able to code up a new framework that better meets their needs (though possibly less total features) in less time and with fewer bugs than a huge community. It shouldn't even be a close race. Also, by developing their own framework they will know exactly what parts suck and still need work and be better able to support it at launch.