Like the old proverb: "A player find A player; B player find C player", if you want to hire A-level people, you must be at least a B+ player. Lacking a bit of technical skill will not hurt much, as long as she has experience & expertise connection to make up for it.
Like Eric, I agree that the best chance to find such good people is using social connection. The birds of same feathers flock together. You can use recommendation from trusted peers, social networking site(Linkedin, Facebook), use words of mouth to spread the news, and when you get an A-player, look around in his/her connection for other candidates.
Remember that there are 2 conditions: the employee should be skilled AND highly engaged. The first part can be guaranteed by candidate's old co-workers. The second part (no less important) is much harder to test, because it's highly individual. I just can advise to look at the candidate's history: did he join any startup before? Did he stick with it? Does he/she have any problems right now, which may result in giving up in the mid-term? But this part depends most in the PM social skills, not technical skills.
After finding the "right" people, the last problem is how you attract good people & keep them. To highly competent people, the best thing is not money. "Give them enough challenge, give them space to succeed, make the open & comfort atmosphere" - those are all buzz words, but they will work if applying well.
At last, you may find this post useful.