First tech hire, please help decide

Question

So I do both tech and business, and I am okay at either - up to a certain level. This has allowed me to build the mvp and start demo'ing it to customers.The product itself doesn't involve building fundamentally new tech, but mostly leverages/repackages existing opensource tools. So most of the technical skills involved are more devops type than pure dev.To get to product market fit, I need to bring in other people. I already have a couple of folks to help with business development. Now I also need an engineer to supplement/replace me.I have a couple of good choices - people with both devops and dev skills that I need. However one of them is purely technical and very good at it. The other also has a devops background but additionally, owned a webdev shop in the past, so they have some skills/sense on the business side as well.Which sort of profile should I choose? How should I decide? Any pointers will be very appreciated.Add/edit: all the business dev folks are on commission-only. The new tech person will also be equity-only (might translate to % of revenue as payout). No salary for anyone right now.

brudgers · Accepted Answer

If you're not paying people, then you're not hiring them. I guess that might be ok in some situations, but one of them where it isn't is if you imagine that not paying someone is still hiring them. And the reason it's not ok to pretend to yourself is that the inability to pay people means that the company isn't operationally viable on a day to day basis by virtue of being grossly under-capitalized.Good luck.

duiker101 · Answer

Sounds like you already have a lot of business people and so maybe a purely technical person would benefit you more