In the early days of a startup, hiring the early team is one of the biggest challenges. It can be tempting to hire contractors and part-time workers to get some help in the short term.
This is not a good idea because they won’t have skin in the game. Part-time employees won’t have enough time to take over any important responsibilities leaving you to do them. You won’t control the schedule of independent contractors so it’s more difficult to plan and execute. Part-time workers and contractors can also leave suddenly which is disruptive and generates more work to replace them.
Full time employees care more. They’ve hitched their career prospects to your startup. By taking added risk, they have more to lose if things don’t go well. This is an important advantage of early-stage startups—the most effective people care a lot.