[nostrademons]

Hire internationally. A good mobile developer from a 2nd-world country (say, Czech Republic, Ukraine, or Russia) goes for $20-30/hour on Upwork. You do pay in communication costs, but their development chops are usually as good or better than devs coming out of top American universities. And the supply is certainly much deeper than "top American college graduates living in the Bay Area" and probably a fair bit deeper than "all American programmers". I know multiple startups - some completely bootstrapped, some venture-funded - where the majority of the development team is abroad.

AppAmaGooFaceSoft hires internationally too, of course, but they tend to go for graduates of top Chinese, Indian, and Taiwanese universities, and less for the self-taught kid who has a computer, an analytical mindset, and a lot of free time.

[zodPod]

Hell why go that far. I work in Pennsylvania and we're not typically making much more (if any more) than $20-30/hr and we'd love a number larger than that.

[tptacek]

I agree, and think it might be smart to include "Iowa" and "Missouri" among the foreign countries SFBA startups hire from.