The short answer
Outsource the MVP. Hire a CTO when you have product-market fit, paying customers, and a roadmap that justifies a senior salary for the next two years.
Why hiring too early kills startups
A CTO costs $120k+ in equity and salary annually. Pre-revenue, that's 12+ months of runway gone before you know if anyone wants the thing. We've watched it bankrupt three founders in five years.
What outsourcing buys you
Speed to validation. A working product in weeks for the cost of one month of a CTO. If it works, you can hire the CTO with revenue in hand. If it doesn't, you only lost the MVP budget — not a year.
When you genuinely need a technical co-founder
Deep tech: ML research, novel hardware, anything where the IP IS the engineering. For 95% of SaaS, the technical risk is solvable; the market risk is the killer.
The hybrid that works
Outsource v1 with a clean code handover (real React, real Postgres, real git history). Hire a senior engineer when you have $20k/month in MRR. By then you can attract better people, and they can read what we built.