Ask HN: Hire Freelancers or a Dev Shop?

I have been a non-tech cofounder in a different industry (Business-to-government, EU), with an experienced CTO, we raised a preseed/seed of $250K but failed to raise more due the nature of our business and the industry declining. Now, I have been working on a new idea for a few months on validation and on technical feasibility and decided to go for it. Its not very complicated to pull off tech-wise, and I found some open source projects that could be of help, but ultimately I would need a team of people to build it.

I obviously need a CTO and I have asked a few friends and acquaintances but at the moment theyre busy with jobs or working on their own projects, and its too early for them because I dont have much to show for at the moment. They have told me to validate the idea first by signing up potential customers and then come back.

So going forward, I can invest around $50K for an MVP, and the initial launch. I can start talking to customers, but I need a team of freelancers to build the MVP. I believe a single developer can build the MVP in 2-3 months considering that we can use the open source project I found and start from there.

My question is, how and where do you find effective and affordable freelancers? How do you go about it without getting burned? Do you go to a dev shop, or make a team of individual ones? Of course if I find a suitable freelancer and everything goes well I would onboard him as a cofounder. I am also open to giving out equity to the dev shop or the freelancers.

Any advice is appreciated and would be of help!