It seems to me that if you receive significant funding and are expected to hire software engineers that you may end up with a worse result.
After all, these employees are not as driven as the cofounders. Even with equity, it's not the same.
Moreover, in a place like Silicon Valley, there's enormous competition for highly skilled software engineers.
So it might be the case that having the cofounders do much of the coding may result in a better outcome.
