My point is that few startups actually need the best and they have no reason to pay twice as much for the best in competition with FAANG. And as you point out, the few that do want the best can get the ones that didn't choose or get chosen by FAANG.
Whether that's enough to justify paying such high salaries at an early phase, I don't know. If you aren't planning on some kind of hyper growth phase, it's probably not. Even if you are, you might do alright without. Reddit survived its stability issues (although I do think they pay fairly well, though not FAANG).