I think people deify execs too much. A lot of the time they're just as clueless as the rest of us.
Every company has different standards. Execs as a general population aren't genius or clueless. You have to get specific about the sub-group.
For example, execs at Amazon are likely to be significantly above average in competence. Execs at a 6 month old startup might be anywhere across the spectrum, hard to know.
(Obviously, not normal to do recruiting if there are no positions open)
As things change during this recession, I could see many Seed stage companies pushing to operational break even. If you can keep your annual costs below $1m, and scale to $1m in ARR, you're going to be far better off than companies that have to raise to keep going. If you can grow and sustain the business for another 24-30 months, you'll avoid the game investors are playing now of "let's see how low we can get this valuation".
Of course typically when you play that game you don't actually admit that you're not hiring and you're running out of cash.
That being said, I would use this article to understand 1-1s with effective execs.