If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.

The best source by far for hiring is people that you already know and people that other employees in the company already know.

Be suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It's easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.

Why couldn't it have been done 2 years ago, and why will 2 years in the future be too late?

You should be able to describe any employee as an animal at what they do.

Most great companies in tech have been built by personal referrals for the first...at least 100 employees and often many more.

Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.