The two week test is a great idea..... I wish the founder of THIS company had thought of that, as I'm sure he'd rather pay for a two-week project and find out that the resource was a poor one, rather than find that out when there's a few months of dev work to be paid for!

I totally agree on the co-founder front..... having just one good coder in-house is better than having a half-dozen off-shore who have no clue what they're doing (IMO).