Often when discussing the first engineers to hire for your startup, people will say things like "hire people smarter then you" or "hire rockstars". This is NOT sufficient criteria for getting your startup team going. While you always want to hire people who are shockingly smart and outstandingly great at building things, this is not sufficient for an early stage startup. For a raw, young company, you also need people with additional traits which differ from what is * necessary* for a later stage company.