[egometry]

If "startup-like hacker culture" means "engineering-driven", I doubt you'd have trouble filling seats.

The thing that seems (in my experience) to drive engineering loyalty the most is making it known to the coders that their opinions are valued by the non-engineers, and that the engineers can drive actual product change (as long as they can prove their ideas legitimate.)

Hiring blindingly smart people and then telling them to stop thinking about the aspects of the business that don't involve writing code is short-sighted and demoralizing to the staff.