Codeclueless - I've heard good things about the hiring posts that show up on HN every month on the first. Post something tomorrow and see what comes up. Also,

Codeclueless - I've heard good things about the hiring posts that show up on HN every month on the first. Post something tomorrow and see what comes up. Also, if you wouldn't mind, would you shoot me an e-mail? I'm looking to move to Sydney in the next 3 years, and I might be interested in starting a relationship. As for language specialization, if you yourself don't have any preference, it might make sense to be flexible with your first hire. Ruby, Python and PHP are all sensible languages, but you could go a long way with someone with Java or .NET experience and a web applications background. That also opens the door to alternate JVM or CLR languages without throwing the experience in the "primary" language away. The only thing you don't want to do is hire someone whose only experience is in something that's either very hard to apply to the web or very hard to replace if this person leaves. For example, I once met a guy on a contracting interview whose day job was writing filesystem extensions for a government agency out in Boulder. The discrepancy between what he assumed he knew about the web because he'd been programming for 20+ years and what he actually knew was PAINFUL. I'm sure he's an excellent programmer, but the leap from filesystems to GoogleEarth mashups is a big leap to make, and the startup that hired him as CTO made a mistake. I'm not sure what salaries are in Sydney, so I can't speak to that. The ? of equity is a tough one. I know what cash is worth, for example, so if someone offers me $X an hour, I can say with relative certainty whether that's worth my time. An ownership stake can be worth wildly varying amounts depending on what it's an ownership stake of. Regarding experience, since this is your first hire, and you don't have much programming knowledge, I would strongly recommend against someone fresh out of university. You're giving this person a significant amount of responsibility, and decisions that get made this early on about architecture, tools and other systems will be important down the road. Again, would you mind shooting me an e-mail? I'm interested in talking more. My contact information is in my profile. Good luck!