[FreakLegion]

> Finally, pay well. I think the standard early startup pay range (180k + 1%) will not get you the technical talent you need. Maybe I am overestimating the technical challenges many companies face, but I would not build a business off of $180k engineers. I would rather pay double that (while being selective about talent) and get something (better) built with fewer people.

This was my view, too, but I've been trying the 'fewer, better' route for a while now and seniors seem to be only marginally ahead of the curve, if at all. Now I wonder whether hiring twice as many juniors and aggressively promoting the ones who prove themselves wouldn't be more effective. (This isn't a good idea for other, pragmatic reasons, but I do wonder if it would work.)

[anal_reactor]

I worked at a company whose business model was hiring students for internship. Not even juniors, just students. The place was bad, the product was bad, everything was bad, but they're still in business, which means that this model does work. I checked their website and they even started offering IT outsourcing services.

My prayers to whoever signs a contract with them.

[miki123211]

Komarch (a very large Polish IT company) is famous for this. They don't have any products of their own, they specialize in box-ticking, contract work and winning tender offers from the government. Because of how tender offers work, anything which cannot be measured doesn't matter, and any system which fulfills the pre-established requirements has to be accepted, no matter how bad it is. This usually means terrible UX and terrible code quality.

There's even a "law of Komarch", "anything that can be done by one senior can also be done by 50 interns."

[benterix]

If you are creating an MVP, this strategy may work. You could then hire more experienced people to rewrite everything if the product takes off.