The hard part (unsolved as far as I know) is for a non-hacker to find good hackers. But assuming you can, the key to hiring and keeping them would be to give them freedom to work the way they want to, including letting them have their way if they feel strongly about design decisions. Since we've assumed you've got good hackers, their design choices will tend to be right, so this is a safe move.
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The hard part (unsolved as far as I know) is for a non-hacker to find good hackers. But assuming you can, the key to hiring and keeping them would be to give them freedom to work the way they want to, including letting them have their way if they feel strongly about design decisions. Since we've assumed you've got good hackers, their design choices will tend to be right, so this is a safe move.
what about the Auctomatic guys?
They also did try to learn and hack:
http://blog.harjtaggar.com/?p=37
They got all their hackers through YC.