This could end up helping much more than hurting long-term. Engineering salaries in the Bay Area are insane. Salaries for engineers in the US overall are very high. If you’re in Europe, you can likely afford 2-3x more engineers than your competitors for the same amount of $ raised.
that's true, but they get more money at better valuations so it balances out -> and engineer headcount is a bad predictor of success! It is as much the experience of taking a database/dev tool and going big that's lacking outside SV -> marketing, operations etc. Plenty of talented engineers (and marketers) around the world, very few engineers who have built a MuleSoft or a Snowflake.
This could end up helping much more than hurting long-term. Engineering salaries in the Bay Area are insane. Salaries for engineers in the US overall are very high. If you’re in Europe, you can likely afford 2-3x more engineers than your competitors for the same amount of $ raised.