It’s hard when literally everything is unaffordable. That is the steady state of startups. Some things are deferrable—for example, you don’t need a Director of Regulatory Affairs until you have the semblance of a manufacturable product and are ready to go to market.
Today I want to talk about hiring people to make the product. And people are the hardest part. If you have a product that involves computer science or even biomedical engineering (probable) , you have to figure out what would possibly motivate a good BSc/MSc/PHD to come and work for your company instead of moving to the West Coast and starting at $160,000 not counting the signing bonus. [And I’ll talk about stock options later, but for now, perhaps I can stipulate that the promise of future speculative riches are for a very specific personality type and not necessarily going to work for 90% of the graduates]
You will not match whatever google, amazon and facebook are offering. Trust me. The only thing that you can likely do is piggy back on personal circumstances like “my girlfriend is finishing her Masters so I want to stay here” or “my parents live two towns over” or even “X is a great place to raise a family without fear of earthquakes, fires, or 6-digit property tax bills”. That is an EXTREMELY small candidate pool and if you ever find said (good) person, offer him/her the MOON to come to your company. I can’t offer a better solution, so I will work on other things you cannot afford in my next post.