Then you will need two senior devs. This is because rockstar devs rarely want to mentor junior devs nor attend meetings.
Most inventors are not professors.
"Contractors are generally not the strongest technically"
Nonesense. Contractors are actually much stronger technically because they usually come in to complete a specific task and are not usually trained by the company.
At least that is my experience here on the east coast.
" I would also consider the effects that knowledge of an explored-but-abandoned acquisition would have on your employees' motivation if they found out"
There is no such a thing as a negative "honest" review. Competitors (and clueless users) always pile up negative reviews while companies with huge budgets add fake "positive" reviews
What if you downloaded an app that you thought it was what you were looking for (without actually reading the app description), will you still rate it a "1 star"?
You are really on point. recently, one of my apps "Cooking Conversions" was featured on Amazon "Free App of the Day". Can you imagine my app got "1-star" reviews because "there are too many conversions" and also because "it is not a game".
http://www.amazon.com/WhichMan-INC-Cooking-Conversions/produ...