Do you really need a full-time hire for that?
gabrielweinberg.com
gabrielweinberg.com
As such, I end doing the mail, finance, support calls (omg, the support calls and emails!), etc. for our startup, and can only hope to weather it out until the amount of work becomes enough to make it actually worth hiring someone.
The real problem is that a lot of it is very domain-specific. This isn't generic stuff that can be freelanced - it's ongoing work that'll take up an hour of my (your) day and requires intimate familiarity with the how and what of our day-to-day routine and products. I still outsource/contract stuff like design work and other "parcelable" jobs, but most of the drudgery will remain on my shoulders until the problems outlined in TFA are no longer applicable for me.
He has been a fairly successful businessman since the late 70s, with ventures ranging from publishing to travel service to real estate.
One thing he always did though was draw in members of the family to help. You'd be surprised how happily people will help you once asked, and being able to step away from a task for an hour or two is a huge relief.
Also the quality of advise goes up highly once people become more involved with your business---from the outside looking in, everything seems hunky-dory and you're liable to just have family grin and say "its awesome!" if you ask for their help. Once they've worked on it for a little while too, maybe because they feel they've earned the right to have input they'll tell you what they really feel.
This applies to your users/customers too--get buy-in from Day 1 and they'll be the best QA department you ever had. When you have someone right out a 3 page email detailing their thoughts, then you know you're onto something.
It also keep the focus on projects with a beginning and an end. FTE's are great for somebody that represents a core function of the business. In my services company we have 6 of them, end everybody is at 95-100% capacity and bought into what we're doing. Adding even one more person though can be treacherous, especially when building a product.
The article is right, users will let you know endlessly about how to fix the UI, you don't need some UI god to figure that out before you have something built.
That's a strong assertion for which I see no evidence in the market. Plenty of great programmers and designers neither have to nor want to work for anyone else.