True, local doesn't equal quality. I guess the difference was that by going local, I was able to verify the quality of my developer's work by people I trusted

True, local doesn't equal quality. I guess the difference was that by going local, I was able to verify the quality of my developer's work by people I trusted rather than from people I didn't know. What's more important, the endorsement of a respected businesses person, designer, or developer that you personally know and respect their work, or the endorsement of a random person that someone lists as a reference? The back end developer that I hired was a speaker at a regional conference, seemed to have the respect of the web community that I was looking to enter (Rails development and MailChimp-esque design and UI,) and had glowing references from web designers and developers that I knew at least as acquaintances. These designers and developers were actually clamoring to use him for freelance stuff before I hired him. If this is the route you want to take, I would suggest networking within your local web design community and go to events. If you want to go the other route, listen to/watch the podcast on Mixergy.com from Nov. 24 on Beanstalk. That guy used a distributed team across the world to do development for his company. The big difference is that he was already a developer.