How does one go about selecting web developers/engineers for a startup when neither principal is a techie?

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It depends on what you’re trying to do. Honestly if you’re open to my advice, I’d say to not bother trying to manage building your own website and to turn to one of the many consultancies out there that have the expertise to take a software project to completion.

The cheapest way forward is to offer equity and a reduced salary to an employee #1. Good employee #1s are really hard to find, but are worth their weight in gold. Not everyone can handle the pressure, and they don’t operate by the same rules everyone else does.

I don’t envy you your position, without knowledge and expertise in managing software projects, you are likely to run into a situation where your entire team is burning through your startup capital and not producing anything of value. It happens a lot.

The question in your comment does not have an easy answer. The field is absolutely vast. And just because a person knows something doesn’t make him a good manager. Generally someone is either a generalist or he isn’t. I am a generalist, most of the coders I work with are generalists. Most people outside my segment of the industry are not.

Generally you’ll hire a “semi-technical” project manager to organize the project. He won’t be able to write any code, but he knows how to talk to developers. This is really important because developers don’t think the way you think and you can’t treat developers the same way you might treat other employees. The last thing you need is for the only guy who knows your whole system to give his two weeks right before an important demo or funding round.