We're a small startup of currently 10 people (3 devs). After a long time struggling to find a proper product-market-fit, we've finally managed to get it right. Our product is currently limited in scope, but we have detailed plans for the future. To make it happen, we need a bigger team, however: There's several big features we need for the application, ideally happening simultaneously.

As it stands, we have about a year of runway, not accounting for future employees, so our CEO is considering to hire a remote development team to build these key features to increase the velocity. However, I fear we loose even more time to managing the remote team, and will receive a barely working prototype we will need to rebuild sooner or later.

Are these fears grounded in reality? I have never worked with a hired team. Can they handle that? Are there communication issues usually? What to look out for when hiring a remote developer team?