Ask HN: How do I find the right hacker to help me build our startup's platform?
We are currently profitable but have very limited income. We are in the black but currently not making enough to pay ourselves anything (or to offer salary based compensation for new employees). I currently have a day job consulting (I have to eat), and am committing nearly all of my nights and weekends to work on our product.
We have a lot of work to do in the next few months for these new big name customers. After those customers launch their products on our platform, I believe we will see a tremendous upswing in sales and can finally have the money to quit our day jobs and start hiring. However, this is probably at least 3 months out and there is a lot of work to be done before then and I need help. I guess it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem.
We are open to offerring equity and/or profit sharing based compensation (and possibly hire on as a full time salaried employee once we get the money stream to accomodate it) for a good developer who could help us build out our platform over the next few months.
I've exhausted my network, the few developers I know with the experience to help are too busy with other jobs/projects to really be able to commit enough to make an impact. I am now at a point where I need to start searching beyond my own network for the right person. So my question is, what is the best approach for finding this person? Where is a good place to start looking? Are there any strategies that have worked for other founders in the past, or any advise you can give?