Hiring three people at $40k/yr each at the beginning is safer than hiring one experienced person at $120k/yr. Maybe one or two of the three don't pan out but, at least, you didn't invest all your time into one person who might ultimately be the wrong fit.
Only do this if you're comfortable doubling someone's salary quickly after they prove themselves. Most companies aren't.
I took a low offer and had to bust my ass and show up a few $120k/yr bad apples that we hired to get my salary raised to an appropriate level and that still took about 18 months over 3 raises.
It would have been easier if I'd left and gone somewhere else and for most other people it will be too.
We hired a guy with 7 years experience to be our Lead Frontend dev and he basically built nothing usable for 4 months before we fired him. He made twice as much as me but my title was still Jr at the time. He didn't add a single piece of infrastructure to make his workload easier. My boss and I threw out all of his work, split it up and got it done in a month.
7 years of experience can very easily end up being 7 years of 1st year experience. I want to see some kind of scale in their responsibilities/accomplishments.
There are some junior-experience people out there with the potential to get a lot done right now.
