If this is your approach to hiring consultants, I'd like to set up a meeting. :)

Sure, as long as you're okay being terminated without warning. And we're expecting results quickly. Like within the first hour.

This made me laugh. Can't tell if it's a joke or not.

Are you looking to hire robots or something?

I now understand why people were asking for so much up front…

Yes it's a joke, but also not really.

If I have an issue and I'm paying a high paid consultant to solve it, well he needs to solve it, right? Particularly if he's not writing code.

A $450/hr consultant better be able to save $4500/hr. A $1000/hr consultant better be able to save $10k/hr.

No, you make that decision. It's not given to you. You could be out -$4500 after a consultant has told you that they cannot save you the money. They're not robots. But likely most consultants are there because they can save you money, well.

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.

> but frankly do not have a need for technical advice by itself.

Then it sounds like you made the correct decision.

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.

It’s possible that your issue is allocating too much equity to investors and advisors and not enough to employees.

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.