[gtsteve]

Telling programmers what to do as a non-programmer can be like herding cats. Your first step should be to hire in a technical manager who can build the rest of the team for you. If you believe this is the future of the company, you should consider hiring someone at the director level who speaks your language and also the language of developers.

This person doesn't even necessarily need to be a programmer or a good one but they do need to know how to run a software development team. You will have to use your experience and intuition to tell if they are a good fit.

You can find this individual at networking events perhaps but if you have the money to spend then you might consider hiring an executive recruitment agency. You also might consider employing a management consultancy company to interview this person to check their technical knowledge and management style but I have no way of knowing what that costs.

This person can then answer all the other questions you have with full knowledge of the context of your company and your local area.

[JoeAltmaier]

This is important to do early, or not at all. I was in a technically-driven startup. Couple of years in, the management team changed and development got a less-technical manager who could talk manager-ese to the President. But he quit paying the slightest attention to Engineering, made silly decisions and bogged the product down in a quagmire it never recovered from.

So, the right hire here from the start is critical.