Ask HN: What does an early stage startup look for in their first(few) recruits?

I imagine "kickass programmer" in that context means someone who can handle the hard challenges writing complicated, core product code.

I'd argue that sort of person probably shouldn't be your first hire (assuming that the founders are technically capable and built the MVP themselves). Founders usually concentrate on the interesting code that solves the pain that the product fixes, and leave the boring but necessary work of writing house-keeping things like account management, email update, and even payment processing to someone else. The first hire should be someone who can come in and write decent code to do that stuff. If they're capable of writing core product stuff as well, even better.

That said almost all the teams who had investment out of the UK's Ignite100 accelerator (my company graduated from it last year) hired marketing and content people first. Getting the word out is very important.

The biggest success in our story involves perseverance and being humble. Any startup involves ups and downs, so especially the early recruits should be there to lift the heavy weight when needed. Losing an employee is bad for any company, but it is more relevant and can be severe when you are a small startup, since most roles don't have substitution scenarios, yet.

Being humble is also crucial, coz when you are very few, keeping the database up and putting out the garbage may sometimes be equally important.