b) where could i meet potential partners (students?) without having the financials to pay them? is HN the place to be?
thanks.
So you have an idea; study it, research it, see if it's worth it, and come back to "me" with fire in your eyes. Tell me this shit is gonna kill, offer me decent %, call people and think out our marketing plan, press releases, interview people. Line shit out for me so by the time I fire up an IDE I know who I am coding for.
Look at my work and tell me you want better. Challenge me. Take my work and sell it. Show me receipts. Put people on hold and tell me about figures. Be my go-getter.
You gotta want it, as much as I do, and it's up to you to tell me what "it" is.
I don't want your business idea, I don't care if it's "good", I wont to hear about it, I will not listen. But should you storm the gate, as loud as you are convinced, and tell me to quit my job to work for nothing with you .. Sir, you might have just gotten yourself a deal.
In business school they taught you business. You can just about shove it. Programmers want a religion; come to me when you want converts, not employees. Believe in motherfucking SOMETHING. I want to bleed with winners, not speculators.
So what has value? Value comes in what I can't find easily. The number one thing missing from the equation any time someone pitches me an idea is some modicum of effort. You may not be able to code, but there are plenty of other things you can do. How much effort have you put in to outlining your idea? Outline your product. Outline its features. Outline its appearance. Spell out the business side in detail. Calculate a burn rate. What other capital investments will you have to make? Who else is in the space? The more detail you have, the more dedication you appear to have.
Beyond that, recognize that your idea might not be appealing to a programmer. Programmers aren't excited by the same things that business developers are. We don't want to implement yet another social business app, even if it does target a niche that "no one else is even paying any attention to!" If your idea isn't technically interesting, your pool of potential developer targets just got cut in half, and the pool of talented developer targets just got cut by a factor of ten.
Develop your idea and share it. Don't fall in to the trap of believing that your idea is unique and requires protection. I don't sign NDAs. Period. I don't sign them because you have nothing I want, and I have everything you want. Remember, I don't want to hear your idea. Show me your idea and all the effort you put in to it. If it's enough, I'll work with you. I'm not going to steal your idea because I've tried to do it all myself before and it doesn't work.
Also, realize that everyone has ideas for an app. Everyone. You need to build the ability to execute. That can be by coding yourself, by outsourcing, by finding people that work for free (good luck), etc. Without the ability to execute, ideas are worth zero.
Learning to code probably won't make you a good coder, BUT it will make it much easier for you to find and talk to good coders. That's worth investing a few months in at the beginning of your career, it will pay off handsomely. Do it. Just get a book that you like in your local bookstore.
I think there's a balance between guarding a good idea and being paranoid someone is going to steal it. Talk to people about your app idea. Be passionate about it. If it's really a good idea and it's something you are serious about, people will mention it to friends who may be willing to work with you.
No one who is able to is going to want to write an app based on your idea for partial equity. People who can program have their own ideas that they are more passionate about.
I'm not a programmer, but it didn't keep me from releasing Audio Footnote (audiofootnote.com).