I'm working currently for a small startup as a developer. My personal opinion would be to find someone who can write and deploy code and can build a relationship with you. Ask for references, live website, repository and so on. But be careful with people who quote a lot of technology without using them. Student or 'real world' experience are good options.
This person would do all the major coding task for you. On top of that if you can create a good relationship, this person would be able to find you other tech people for tasks he/she can't handle and can give you nice advice.
The programming language at this stage is not very important IMO. But focusing on a popular programming language with a big community is something to have. Imagine if you need to recruit 2 others coders to do the job. Or if you main developers can't work for you anymore.
Something which may help for recruting someone is to write a draft of your needs (setting-up servers, level of front-end/backend programming...)
Hope that help