Thanks Teng. Hmm... whenever I hear that a new company is taking money to stack the technical team, my first thought is immediately "Aha! A planned run-up to a fast acquisition!", which you have perhaps already pointed out to be a misguided guess on my part.

But, this begs the question: expanding the platform, paying down technical debt, adding some adult supervision (heh) are all very valuable for the medium-to-long term, but can't this be achieved by using contractors alone? BTW, I ask this from the perspective of a full-time software engineer and part-time entrepreneur.