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.

You also want people who are maniacally determined and that is slightly different than having a risk tolerant attitude.

... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.

The cost of getting an early hire wrong is really high.

As long as you keep doing the right thing and have the best product, you can beat the bigger company.

You also want to fire people who a) create office politics, and b) who are persistently negative.

Great execution towards a terrible idea will get you nowhere.