I recently offered to hire and manage three local C programmers in Cebu, Philippines for the company that owns the web scripting software I've been using for more than a decade. My offer would have cost them about 2/3 of the cost to hire one intermediate level C programmer in the USA -- yet with my offer they would have had a 4-man team developing their newly purchased software instead of only one.
They could have made substantial progress these past 5 months, but instead they have apparently made no progress whatsoever, and they are still wasting time trying to hire one C programmer in a little midwest city where one of the owners lives. I guess five months of wasted time with no progress to speak of is something that does not bother them very much -- but I think it should, because the more time they waste not hiring a programmer and failing to make some real progress, the bigger and stronger their competition grows.
I ran my own outsource programming business here for several years ... and while it is sometimes a challenge to 'train' a skilled programmer from scratch over here, there are so many who already have the requisite skills that I find it amusing that problems like yours actually exist. I mean, what's wrong with hiring an outsource programmer and getting the jobs done? Especially if the programmer you eventually hire is going to be given as much autonomy as you claim?
I just don't see why every person that's contributing to a startup company needs to be part of the 'local startup family', that's all. It seems to me that sometimes it just makes more sense to get the work started and finished -- one way or another -- even of you have to change your approach to make it happen.