Practical tips on hiring the best people? Which country? Remote vs. In Person?

Hi Reddit,

I run a tech startup that's grown to $20M ARR. While we are relatively big, we are incredibly cash strapped till Q3 due to debt we took on last year and are currently paying back. In Q3, I'll finally have a large budget to sit and focus on building out our team. Now I'm trying to figure out: what are the optimal circumstances? We really screwed it up with our first batch of key hires after our seed round: US Product Manager, US Head of Customer Success - quit; US Head of Sales, US Head of Engineering - fired.

We've built a mostly B or C team, and it really annoys me. We are slow, we are not up for big challenges, and people are, on average, not that brilliant. Out of our nearly 150 employees, I think I have ONE A player. However, they are also functioning at 60%. We are building additional "brands" this year, so there might be a way to separate a higher performing culture into our second brand.

I have 3 questions, might seem relatively basic, but as we did such a bad job the first time around, I'd love to learn what you all think! I'm trying to build an optimal team with A-players!

Q1: Today we are fully remote, should I get an in person office going? In which city?

Q2: In general, which city should I hire talent from? I live in San Francisco and sometimes LA, but find the culture here generally too laid back. New York? But to keep a high quality, let's say, marketer, interested long term, they're going to want $200-220k base (and that's not even that competitive). While that is fine, it will slow down my intended plan for hiring. London? Salaries are comparatively much lower, and talent quality is still pretty high, but I am a little unsure of the work culture. In terms of budget, I'd love to aim for $150-180k/key hire and to go as high as $300k if appropriate.

Q3: Should I be hiring people with 20 years of relevant experience? 2-3 years with a hunger to prove themselves? Fresh grads we can mould into whatever we need?

As for what exactly I'm trying to hire for, lots of key hires: department heads, digital marketers, content people, engineers, AI engineers, operations people, strategy people, and more.

I don't know enough about all the working cultures in these places, but I want to find and incentivize people who are willing to own and take responsibility for an area of the business, be trusted to make good decisions, and view it as their responsibility to improve their areas drastically, more than the typical 9-5. I feel today's workforce is not content with base + light equity, and maybe we should consider tying an unlimited-upside incentive to a relevant KPI to incentivize people working harder than just "what is required"? (edit: I know might get some hate for this "work harder than 9-5" mentality, but to clarify, I'm trying to figure out what incentive structures will naturally attract the type of person that wants this type of working life)

What do you think?

Also, any other practical tips for finding awesome people like this?

edit: hooooly! this thread blew up. I'll do my best to reply to everyone, thank you for all your responses!