It’s always a question of ROI. It’s hard for me to identify any form of technical advice that would be worth that much at my current company stage. I’ve already allocated n% of shares to investors and advisors.
Before spending money I must identify a specific need. I can give a very specific need for code (features, launch dates, customer requests) but frankly do not have a need for technical advice by itself.
I wholeheartedly agree that technical advice isn’t needed at this stage and likely the main thing to solve for is how fast can you iterate to an MVP and PMF-solution that could allow you to fundraise further. I’ve worked with some startups where they outsourced on a solution basis to alleviate the risk of building the wrong thing. Architecture was ok but not the most important issue at the current stage.
Disclaimer: I run a consulting firm with fractional CTO services for startups and previously founded a startup.
If the project is really open source, maybe you need to shift from feature implementation to community-building. If the userbase is large and has a cause, then that can be a better carrot for a first SWE than an outsized salary.
Before spending money I must identify a specific need. I can give a very specific need for code (features, launch dates, customer requests) but frankly do not have a need for technical advice by itself.