Re: How to get a team?
So the problem breaks down to this: you need a technical lead, but you don't know what one of those looks like. Tough problem, yes, but not insoluble.
The first half of the equation is to have your own house in order. (I'm making this general, not offering specific advice to you, John.) That is, if your role in all of this is to be "the business guy" in a new venture, then you need to be able to demonstrate more than just a strong desire to capitalize on a vague idea (an altogether too common trait among wannabe web entrepreneurs), you need to be able to convince people that you're willing to put as much effort into the success of the venture as you expect from them. If your core people feel like hourly-rate employees (even if that's the actual business relationship), then you might as well just put a spec on rent-a-coder.com and wait for the inevitable $25 bid from Tajikistan or Belarus -- you'll get just about the same result with a lot less out-of-pocket. If, on the other hand, they feel like you're out there hustling with the marketing, branding, copy writing and funding and are willing to share the success, then the chances of finding and keeping the right key people go way up.
(By way of example, the people working on the Macintosh project at Apple in the early '80s were making less than I was at the same time as a corporal in the Canadian military. They knew they were working on Something Big, though, and that their input had meaning. From all accounts, Steve Jobs was an absolute tyrant during that period -- but if people were being screamed at at two o'clock in the morning, it was because Jobs was there at two o'clock in the morning testing and reviewing, so they were willing to sweat blood to make Macintosh happen. Now, not every project is a Macintosh, or even a start-up directed towards a billion-dollar Google buy-out or a huge IPO with enormous employee stock options, but if people see you as part of the overall team rather than just a taskmaster with a whip, some unreasonable expectations and a biscuit for them once a week, you'll get their attention, their loyalty and their best work.)
That still leaves you the problem of finding "the tech guy", and if you don't have easy access to the various Silicon Valley dating services, the thing to do is to look for your own personal Yenta -- a matchmaker. You don't necessarily need somebody who can do the tech lead's job (although that would help) but you do need somebody who can sort the diamonds from the fresh barnyard organic fertilizer. Someone who knows what all of those abbreviations on a résumé mean, and who can ask the sorts of questions that can tell you whether or not the applicant knows what they mean. (They don't always, you know.) Someone who can look at the applicant's code samples (and you should never hire a coder who can't provide them) and tell whether or not they know what they're doing (or at least look trainable, if it's for something lower down the scale than your lead -- the hopeless are easy to spot if you know what you're looking for). Someone who can understand your project well enough to tell whether the applicant is capable of architecting a solution. Remember, the guy (or gal) this guy (or gal) is going to help you hire will be the person you're going to rely on most for choosing the rest of your team, so this first hire is key.
Even if the business relationship you envision isn't exactly a partnership, you should think of the working relationship with your tech lead as a partnership -- you'll have to work a lot on trust until things become concrete enough for you to understand them. (You'll probably be able to spot really big stupid mistakes early on -- common sense still applies -- but don't be surprised if some of the early doings seem to be black magic bull-puckey that aren't showing any results you can see other than numbers on the wrong side of your ledger.) That means that your opinion of the applicant is every bit as important as the Yenta's -- you need to be able to trust your tech lead as a person and as a manager of people as well as having some reassurance as to his/her technical abilities.
There are a number of people around this neighborhood who have the technical chops to be that Yenta for you, even if they may not be right for the lead spot (either because they have other things going on, or because they lack the people skills). They're not hard to spot if you go digging in the more technical areas of the forum -- not that you want to spam them with PMs, but you can check any PMs you receive against their entries (and, of course, the replies to those entries) and reputation here.
“Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.” --Donald Knuth
"It was as if its architects were given a perfectly good hammer and gleefully replied, 'neat! With this hammer, we can build a tool that can pound in nails.'" -- Alex Papadimoulis (on TheDailyWTF.com)
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