[maxharris]

I live in Madison, and I did a startup here (with two co-founders) back in '99. I ended up paying ~$20k (my share of the debt, with interest) on an idea that went nowhere (and we developed our own software - it would have been much, much more expensive if we tried to pay someone else to do it).

So don't pay to do it! Your idea is most likely not right anyway. Do you really want to erase $30k to make it obvious?

If you really think you have a great idea, do this as a summer project (learn to program if you need to). Just don't borrow or spend much money on it. If people might eventually pay to use your thing, it won't matter that your implementation is rough at first.