You never want to be in a place where an employee has vested 3 out of the 4 years of stock and they start thinking about leaving.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

You have to find a small market in which you can get a monopoly and then quickly expand.

Keep salaries low and equity high. Keep the organization as flat as you can.

Why now, why is this the perfect time for this particular idea, and to start this particular company?

Once your product is working, switch from not caring about this to caring about this a little bit.

You're either not hiring at all or it's probably your single biggest block of time.