1. Employ younger, inexperienced people and train them
2. Import immigrant developers
3. Hire people in different geographies
As an alternative, why not:
1. Hire older workers
2. Hire the unemployed American workers
3. Hire in America?
Well, because it costs more? Does it?
I don't know, I am just trying to open up the conversation here.
Edit: made language more neutral
We've tried the latter too but have not been even remotely as successful. The job requires some mental elasticity and they older developers we tried it with were a bit too set in their ways. It didn't make sense given the market since at least here older developers are pretty well employed so the salary is still high.
But I am more than willing to try it again.
1. If the startup doesn't have the money to pay more, what should it do?
2. If a startup decides not to opt for any of the options, and the competitors do, what should it do?
-- Note: the competitor can be in India, for example.
To the point where the risk and reward involved make it a losing proposition. As a rule of thumb, I anticipate the value of employee options to diminish by an order of magnitude between the angel round and IPO/sale. This would make an initial stake of 0.5% in a company that sells for 100 million dollars to be worth $50,000, before taxes.