No, a startup lives and dies by revenue or fundraising. Engineers are a means of achieving revenue for many startups, but that does not mean they live and die by their engineers. There are plenty of large companies that got there without engineering excellence.

I'm sorry, but that's kinda of nonsense.

You can build a fairly successful startup with little to no engineering.

Sure, engineers are usually pretty important (they're great at automating tasks to improve efficeincy)... but so are many other roles.

How wrong can someone be? Unless the startups core proposition is some advanced algorithm (like openai), something very hard to replicate, it absolutely does not matter how great their engineers are. They merely need to be barely competent. Of course, better engineers means more efficiency and a different structure but that never fails a startup. Bad growth does. But growth numbers expected of VC backed startups can fail it. Thus the factors that fail or succeed most startups is not the engineeers.

You can say the same thing about marketing. If there's no marketing, who buys the product.

I guess these are engineers who somehow don't need to draw a wage then?

I was an engineer for 15 years and have been a tech presales for 4 years now. You couldn't be more wrong.

Best engineers making the best product ever will not make a dollar without good sales people and marketing and product managers and VC and ... You need ALL of these to make a succesful company.