Regardless of how social you are, your network is always going to be relatively small, by limiting your hiring to that small pool of candidates you'll likely be

Regardless of how social you are, your network is always going to be relatively small, by limiting your hiring to that small pool of candidates you'll likely be missing out on many more talented candidates. There's also conflict of interest issues that are raised by hiring through your network, you need to be very careful you don't let the fact they were introduced through a friend (or a friend themselves) bias your judgement of their abilities. It's very easy to find yourself brushing away the flaws in a candidate because "you know they're good anyway". And of course there is the issue that if your in the startup community, most of your contacts are probably quite happy working at a startup of their own or one where they have options (hence don't want to leave).