Ask HN: As a startup, how to get good developers and keep them stayed?

As a developer, I love writing code and solving problems. I spend my Friday nights writing code. I routinely pull all nighters writing code. Did I mention I love writing code?

I am going solo on my current project, so I'm having to do all the non-tech stuff (marketing, financing, sales, operations, customer support). I like doing it, but I'd rather not. My time is much better spent solving technical problems.

The non-tech stuff is equally hard and equally important. I might not be the best BizDev guy, but I'm definitely not going to trust it to just anybody.

Based on my experience, you have to be the best BizDev person I've ever met. That's actually not that high of a bar; most "BizDev" folks have no idea what hustle looks like.

Here's how I'd define that...

1) How well defined is your product? How have you evaluated the product/market fit? If you aren't regularly engaging with customers, you haven't even started yet. I want to see significant customer-facing interaction on a regular basis.

2) How well have you thought out the marketing plan? What distribution channels have you identified? Have you created marketing collateral for those channels yet? If not, get busy.

3) Where's your business plan? Don't laugh; I'm serious. Anybody that scoffs at a business plan is a fool (and they've probably never done one before, which is a very bad sign). It's a litmus test that shows you have gone through the business planning process. And it's actually quite informative for me to better understand how thoroughly you have thought through your idea.

4) Show me your financial projections. These had better be rock solid. If my accountant laughs when reading your financials, not good.

5) Tell me where you personally want to be in 3 years. What are your life goals, your financial goals, etc?

6) Show me your mock-ups, prototypes, wireframes, etc. You should already have these (sourced via crowdsourcing/outsourcing) and are actively iterating them as part of your conversation with customers.

7) You should have spent at least $5k of your own money on this project. I don't care what you spent it on (conference fees, outsourcing, travel, etc). I want to see you with some skin in the game.

I think that's a reasonable first draft list of things I'm looking for in a BizDev person. I'll add more as I think of them.

Does that help?

It's been said before, but I firmly subscribe to "You don't 'get'/ find/ hire great developers, you earn them." Make sure you leave enough room for exciting projects, give your developers exposure (at least those who want it) and let them present at meetups, conferences, ... Be an active member of your community (throw parties, support hackathons, ...) to raise the reputation of your startup and the want-to-work-there-factor along with it - but only get involved with aspects that relate to your business/ industry and keep it honest.

+1 for involving developers in the decision making. Also, free lunch, offsites, etc. probably also do their part.

Let them be a part of deciding group. Good developers want to create good software not only implement others vision.

Basically, follow Maslow.