Looking for direction with my first developer higher

I'm going to answer pricing last because it goes hand in hand with vetting.

The stack shouldn't matter so long as it's a common stack. If you hire someone doing JS/Python/Ruby or some other common technology, then you should easily be able to find someone else to continue building on it if you need to. I personally dislike Ruby, but that doesn't make it a bad choice because there's a large hiring pool and large companies (e.g. Github) have been built with it. I personally love Golang, but the hiring pool is still fairly small so there's a business risk.

I wouldn't do equity with a contractor. The only reason to do so is to save on capital, but I think it's a weird spot to be in when your contractor is essentially an investor as well. Information due to an investor may also be something you don't want to disclose to someone in your employ.

Pricing is hard because a really good developer is going to be expensive ($100-$250/hr or even more), but it's going to be hard to tell the difference between a good developer and someone just charging a lot if you aren't a developer yourself.

The challenge also comes from the fact that while the hourly rate 2x-10x what you would pay a less experienced developer, the amount of work you get done in that time is even greater. The "100x developer" doesn't come from being able to type code 100x faster. It comes from having experience in being able to make better decisions instead of having to learn things the hard way on your project.

My perspective makes it hard to provide advice in vetting because I am a developer. However, from all the mistakes I've seen others make in getting developer cofounders/contractors I've noticed a few things that may help:

• Infrequent communication is really bad. You want someone who is willing to talk to you multiple times a week. You do not want someone who just wants to have a one hour meeting, then go into hiding for a few days or weeks with code magically appearing. This never works out.

• Difficult communication is also really bad. Just because you're talking about technical topics does not mean you should leave a conversation with a developer understanding little to nothing about what they're doing and how they're doing it. They should be able to clearly communicate with you if they have a strong understanding about the work.

• Software architecture often reflects the product itself for good reason. No developer can build the right software if they don't understand the product. You should have a good feeling when you talk to a developer about your product. Asking questions about certain things is a plus. Pointing out problems WITH alternative solutions is another plus.

The first two points should narrow down a list of candidates pretty quickly. The third will take some practice on your part.

Hope this helps.

1. Depends on the developer and their experience. I'd charge you $5-20k usd for that for me personally depending on the work and if there was a retainer aspect to the contract but you could definitely get it for a lot cheaper.
2. Yes, some stacks you'll find weighted more towards senior devs but its not an issue with the common ones.
3. No, not if you're paying them a contracting fee. Yes it is a red flag from a contractors perspective. I don't know anything about you or your skills so your equity is worthless.
4. The only way you can do it is figure out very small milestones on short schedules and stick to them. If the features in the milestones are small enough you shouldn't have very much slippage if any.

From a freelancer perspective, equity won't be a red flag if you offer it after a few months. Up-front pay can build trust, but if you are quick with paying bi-weekly invoices your dev will love you just the same.

Stack matters, but not necessarily in the price. Btw, what tech stack do you have?

Onboarding and mentoring someone who joins you(r team) is super important, no one at young companies has any clue about that aspect of management. No one.

Give them a small paid project, feature, or bugfixes for starters. Something that should be done within two days. That's the best test and a lot of senior devs simply refuse to do coding tests.
Ask them to write down any issues they had with setting up their local dev environment. Improve this step so new team members have it easier. Test/dev data is one aspect of that.

I do wonder whether you will use VisualBonus for your own team...

Hey Phil, I'm currently freelancing as a dev, while building my business, so can offer some insights.

Drop me an email at julian@weardulo.com with some more info, like location, what you need to accomplish etc. and I can share some experience, hopefully giving you a better idea.

Looking forward!