Just say it- you are looking for a cofounder to apply with for this round. Get rid of your shaky co-founders. If you can't convince them this is the one idea they should work on maybe you need to change your idea.
Not necessarily. You can have a great idea and still have shaky cofounders. It doesn't automatically mean your idea sucks, cofounders can have any number of outside concerns that may prevent them from throwing their full weight behind your project. Job, wife, SO, children, mortgage, bills, school, etc.
And even then, your partners may not realize what a big idea you're sitting on. I think Robert Morris had little faith in Viaweb from the beginning. I guess that's how he ended up getting his ear pierced.
My best friend would probably come along as a co-founder, and he is a very good coder, whom I worked with on several projects before. But he works as a freelancer and just got an interesting offer for a new project. It might be a close chase...
Now about the idea: it is true that most of my friends didn't get overexcited when I told them about it. I think that is because it deals with a relatively new thing: build on demand hardware. It is only just starting off (Ponoko, eMachineShop, Apple and Dell online shops...), and people are simply not used to the idea. They think it is exotic and weird, but I think there is a fair chance that in relatively short time it will be really, really big.
Edit: I'll probably be at BarCamp Munchen tomorrow, in case any prospective co-founders want to talk...
Maybe in a week I will talk more about it ;-) Anyway, definitely serious stuff, not just a niche market.
I lived in Germany for a little while a few years ago. It has a very conservative culture when it comes to career paths.
My (German) girlfriend was quite talented in the area of hospitality management, but found it very difficult to get a job in hotel management due to not having her degree in the field (she'd had great marks in her international business degree though). Self taught skills were regarded negatively compared to a degree in the field.
In Australia, I'd worked as a journalist for the largest magazine and newspaper publishers in the country, and was training RHCAs and RHCEs for Red Hat, despite having neither a journalism nor computer science degree.
My girlfriend's mother never really understood how I could either not have gone to university, or changed careers. I doubt they'd understand why anyone would leave a job for a startup with a high likelihood of failure either.
When I read your post, I was reminded of a similar article about Asian students, who despite high marks, often exist in a culture that pushes them away from the unknown.
There are, however, always exceptions. Best of luck.