[viscanti]

There's different stages of a company. In the beginning, when flexibility is more important, contractors might make sense. Even then, I think you're better off finding flexible developers to work with long-term, but if a contractor is the best you can do at that stage, it's probably not a deal breaker.

MVP+ stage requires a lot of iterative development. Ideally, you'd want to keep the people who are helping with that, because they'd know WHY things are done the way they are. They'll be aware of the failed experiments and previous iterations. You don't want future employees making the same mistakes. The goal of the MVP+ stage is to learn as much as possible about your market and product. Letting that product learning walk out because they were contractors is probably a mistake.