It sounds like you want an employee / contractor who will act like an owner. If you want this level of commitment from someone very good, you usually have to give them part of your company. And I don't mean just options and profit sharing; I mean partners or shareholders.
Even then it is difficult, because you already have invested years in this, so obviously anyone you bring on will be a minority stakeholder. As a minority holder, they will have no real say-so in the business (you can always override them in a disagreement), they have liability they wouldn't have as a contractor / employee, and there probably will not be any profit to share for a long time. And even when there is profit, you get to decide what to do with it - not them. And you get the added burden of not screwing over your new minority holder, at least not too much.
Try putting yourself in their shoes: let's say a programmer has invested 3 years in writing a cool new program and has developed "cutting-edge IP". But they have no marketing or business experience. You do. What would you want from this guy to dedicate 3 years of your life to him and his company in a "critical role", and "take genuine ownership" for developing his business? (The quotes are not there to be snippy, but to use your own words to describe what you are looking for.)
No, I want a CTO, and certainly not a contractor who will act like an owner. (I've said many times in this thread that I am not looking for contractors, and state on the jobs page that I'm seeking full-time permanent employees).
To answer your question: what I'd want is a stake in the equity and governance of the company. These things aren't unusual when joining a new company, and in my prior two ventures (futurescaper.com, imatest.com), I've hired both CTOs and CEOs without difficulty, and successfully integrated them into the governance of the companies.
Somehow, this time around, my recruiting efforts seem to be generating a crazy number of misunderstandings. People assume that I'm looking for contractors (I'm not). People assume that I won't be paying competitive salaries (I will be). People assume that I won't be giving away equity (I will be). People assume that I won't be including officers of the company in its governance (I will be). And people make these assumptions even when my job descriptions explicitly say otherwise. I'm baffled by this, since I haven't encountered these presumptions with my prior startups.
I'm starting to wonder if developers in the web application space have perhaps been so badly burned by prior startup experiences that at this point they basically presume bad faith from any new venture they encounter. If so, that's really unfortunate, and I guess there's nothing I can do about it except either A.) hide the fact that I'm a startup (which would hardly be honest), or B.) Accept that that 90% of prospective candidates will weed themselves out simply by making bad assumptions, and realise that I probably didn't want those people anyway.
Also, I have to say that this experience is also starting to really warm me up to recruiters, who presumably are more skilled than I at dealing with the sort of industry dynamics that lead to these kind of misunderstandings.
Even then it is difficult, because you already have invested years in this, so obviously anyone you bring on will be a minority stakeholder. As a minority holder, they will have no real say-so in the business (you can always override them in a disagreement), they have liability they wouldn't have as a contractor / employee, and there probably will not be any profit to share for a long time. And even when there is profit, you get to decide what to do with it - not them. And you get the added burden of not screwing over your new minority holder, at least not too much.
Try putting yourself in their shoes: let's say a programmer has invested 3 years in writing a cool new program and has developed "cutting-edge IP". But they have no marketing or business experience. You do. What would you want from this guy to dedicate 3 years of your life to him and his company in a "critical role", and "take genuine ownership" for developing his business? (The quotes are not there to be snippy, but to use your own words to describe what you are looking for.)