[SteveC]

I met mine through a mutal friend. He had the product idea and could do everything needed except for the technical side of things. My name was eventually brought up and I got a phone call later that night to go over the idea. A week later I had a prototype version ready to demonstrate and we moved on from there. That was 5 years ago and we're still business partners to this day.

[newbiedude]

I'm interested in the relationship between the idea creator and the coder.

I have the idea, but I can't program for the life of me. I've outsourced to people in China but I need to have someone local who can take care of the small stuff.

It just seems that if I find somebody I'll just be telling them what to do while I sit and watch them code...

How do you deal with this?

[SteveC]

If it was just him giving me an idea then I would have simply done it myself without his involvement. Our product is about teaching guitar. I didn't have any guitar experience while he has nearly two decades worth. He has to produce all the content which is a massive task in itself. The difference is he works on a guitar and I work on a computer. I should make clear the idea is no longer just his. He may have had the initial idea but it's developed a great deal from there to be made up of many ideas from both of us. Ownership of an idea seems to dilute over time. I believe our relationship works because it is equal. Equal decision making power, work load, and business ownership. I think any business relationship where the workload isn't equally shared is doomed to failure. Ideas aren't really worth much. His idea was seemed pretty obvious but we discovered no one was really doing it (due to technical restraints which have only started lifting over the past five years, not through lack of a market ;-).

For a successful business relationship I believe you need to bring an essential skill that helps the project get off the ground, not just an idea. Otherwise, your only alternative is to learn how to code or pay someone to do it.