Why would I be interested in your idea? More than likely you aren’t trying to feed starving children. I might pretend like I’m interested, but at the end of the day, it’s just a paycheck.
Well, this is simple. You want somebody invested and passionate about the project.
Have you ever noticed, you can move mountains if you are genuinely interested in something? That it is difficult to focus and too easy to procrastinate if you don't want to do something or find something boring?
Corporations are good at solving large problems because they can throw funds and money at the problems. They can absorb the damage caused by people who are barely productive.
When you are startup you can't do that. But the advantage you have is that you are looking for one person at this point in time and you can be picky and wait until you find the one. Bad hire at this point in time can frequently spell disaster for your budding enterprise.
I don't want to say that it is totally impossible to find somebody who might not be interested about your idea but will still do good job. But it is unlikely and then remember, you are not only looking for your first engineer but also your first manager, possibly CTO, etc.
Look at stories of successful startups -- in most cases first hires seem to have been critical and mostly seem to be passionate people who then established themselves close to the top of new organization.
This is probably part of why it's hard to find a good first engineering hire -- for better or worse, most engineers aren't a good fit for that stage of a company's growth.
Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.
Maybe that's not widely agreed, though. I saw an ad on the "Who's Hiring?" post this month looking for a first engineer with a broad and deep skill set and big responsibilities offering 0.2% equity... Essentially no motivation to move heaven and earth to make the company succeed. Shrugs.
Founders do not treat their company as "just a paycheck". They're not just turning up to punch the clock. Early on, the company is their life -- their efforts determine its success, and their company's success is their own success
Yes because they have a hope for a larger reward later.....
The same goes, to a lesser extent, for early employees.
Them not so much.
For instance Marco Arment was the first engineer at Tumblr. The exit was for $1 billion. He is rumored to have received less than $6 million.
I got an offer recently to be a first engineer where two founders (non-technical guys) would ask me to solve some major problems but could not offer competitive salary and absolutely refused any stake in the company when asked. So no technical knowledge and no common business sense.
