Is it better for a startup to hire a founding engineer or work with a software agency first?

A strong founding engineer provides long-term ownership of the codebase and technical decisions, but finding that individual can take time, and they can only do so much alone. An agency can assemble a complete team and move quickly in the early months, yet there is a risk of losing control if they own all the context and infrastructure. A practical approach is to have a trusted senior person, either in-house or as a fractional CTO, who sets the direction and then employs a vetted agency or on-demand team as extra support. This way, you keep strategy and architecture decisions close while scaling execution when necessary. Over time, you can transition the most valuable people into long-term collaborators or in-house hires.