Don't mind him, he's apprenticing under Donald Trump.

That isn't to say he's not right to some extent - you will have a lot harder time finding project members that are willing to commit and take the project seriously under the promise of 'maybe', especially if you don't already know a bunch of coders to use as your primary pool.

Just ask around though, there's people out there. Post here, on other php forums, tweet it and hashtag it #php or whatever best fits the project, basically just ask around as much as possible. You never know.