The best source for hiring is personal referrals from people you already know, as most successful tech companies have been built this way.

As a startup founder, prioritize exhausting your personal network before exploring hiring marketplaces, and treat job boards and meetups as a background process.

You should leverage your network to find and attract top talent to your ventures, as this is a significant advantage.

You should leverage your network to find and attract top talent to your ventures, as this is a significant advantage.

When using hiring marketplaces, be proactive in reaching out to candidates, as demand for good engineering talent exceeds supply.

For early-stage startups, it's crucial to decide what type of engineer you need based on what is holding your company back, whether it's productivity or security issues.

It's more important to work with someone you like and trust than to find a co-founder with the perfect skill set. If you have a strong working relationship, you can hire to fill any skill gaps later.

Hiring in the early stages of a startup is often unscalable and requires significant effort to sift through potential candidates.

In the early stages, it's often better to have the founders build the MVP themselves rather than hiring engineers right away.