I'm actually trying to bootstrap my startup, getting people waving wodges of money in front of me to do contracting work instead is really distracting :P
Typically you get to keep more (generally 73%-75% of the amount), but you'll also need an accountant to minimize your taxes and that'll cost you about a grand a year. But in most cases it's worth it.
Well done anyway ;-) As a lead dev myself I totally agree that people strong with multi-threading and networking are rare.